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Comment by magicalhippo | Hacker News Reader

> The popular preparation used to be boiling or steaming, and many people still find that gross with modern varieties.

What is wrong with people? They're delicious, and an absolute must along side a reindeer roast with a creamed mushroom sauce, or similar. Steamed of course.

Though I did learn the hard way as a kid that they can be rather harsh on the stomach when raw...

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What's "wrong with people" is they don't like eating poison. You can train yourself to like anything, but the bitter alkaloids that give brussel sprouts and such their nasty bitter taste are indeed a toxin. There isn't enough to be dangerous in modern varieties, but there was in their wild ancestors.

There's a saying, The bitter the better

Many bitter foods are highly nutritious.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/bitter-foods

Bitterness is quite literally the "this is poison, stop eating" taste category that incidentally happens to have a lot of false positives because for the most part it's cheaper to reject some good food than to accept eating some poison. An ironic thing to say in a thread about peppers, but still.

And much much more false negatives, which raises the question if the "stop eating this, this is bitter and bitter means poisonous" has any truth in it.

If bitter = poisonous, then the plants that evolve to be more bitter will be eaten less. Thus, non-poisonous foods that evolve to be more bitter have a genetic advantage over their less bitter counterparts.

That would be true if there were a fitness advantage for the plant when a herbivore dies, but in actually the fitness advantage comes from discouraging the herbivore from eating the plant.

They are much less bitter if the plants had been exposed to frost before harvesting. My parents used to have them in the garden. Brussels sprouts in winter were nice.

Never had to train myself, always just liked them, and they don't taste particularly bitter.

So I had a hunch it was like cilantro, and seems there's indeed a genetic reason[1].

So fair enough, if they taste bitter I'll accept it's not a nice side dish.

[1]: https://www.compoundchem.com/2014/12/04/brusselssprouts/

I can agree with the first part. Here in Seattle, commonly known as South Alaska, I always order the McReindeer burger at McDonald’s when it’s in season (they alternate with the NcRib).

This might have been marginally funny if I spelled McRib properly

with those methods, if you overcook it is pretty much game over. roasting tends to be more forgiving

They are bitter, and not in a tasty way, but in an overpowering gross way

Mushroom sauce?? What's wrong with you?! ;-)

Hehe.

I should have specified it's wild mushrooms, we have a lot of funnel chanterelle[1] (do not confuse it with deadly webcap[2] which can grow alongside) and regular chanterelle by our cabin, so usually that's what we use.

Makes for a quite delicious sauce.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craterellus_tubaeformis

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortinarius_rubellus

>What is wrong with people?

De gustibus ...

What do you plebs even eat with your reindeer roast?

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