I’ve grown them so I do know. Lettuce is not a Brassica. But the variety of edible Brassicas, not just oleraceae, is remarkable. I think it includes turnip and even mustard. Mustard greens are delicious, BTW. Quite nippy. I once tried to make mustard from the seed, but it came out rather bitter.
Lettuce comes in many varieties. I was taught it was the ‘bitter herb’ in Jewish ritual. Since I am familiar with at least a few of its manifestations, I suspect it is not related to cabbage.
Paul in Qatar mentioned this; new cultivars of Brussels sprouts were developed in the 1990s which are less bitter than the old ones. If someone hasn’t tasted Brussels sprouts in many years, they may be surprised at how they taste now.
Well, cooking them by boiling the snot out of them until they are gray has never been helpful at any time.
Lettuce is unrelated to cabbage, mustard, and other members of the Brassicaceae (Cruciferae). Instead it belongs to the Asteraceae (Compositae) the same family as dandelions and daisies.
A hemorrhoid from Satan’s anus is still a non-starter for me.
We usually grow a few stalks.
It’s hard to believe that the brassicas are all one family until you see a bunch of very different ones that have gone to flower, then it’s a big “Ah-HA!” moment because the flowers are all basically very much the same.
Where’s the bacon?
But yes, Brussels sprouts can be delicious when prepared correctly. Which means don’t let a Brit or your grandmother anywhere near them!
No cabbage family plant is improved by boiling. Just brings out the sulfur.
Another weird product-of-a-plant is the peanut! I explained to my son not too long ago that he would never, ever find a peanut tree! When I told him of the plant, and how they grew, he looked at me like I had two heads. I had to go online and let Wikipedia show him that I wasn’t telling him a fairy tale.
The Son is in his thirties, LOL.
There should be a museum of weird plants!
~VOW
One of the staples in my kidney-friendly diet is boiled cabbage - delicious with other ingredients, and no sulfur.
I LOVE brussels sprouts from the stalk.
Does anyone remember the episode of Monty Python, in which the characters are on a TV show that thinks up insults for different nationalities? This time it was Belgium, and the suggested insult was “Sprouts” But they changed their minds and settled on “Those dirty Belgian bastards.”
I only last week learned what cashews look like in the wild. World shattered.
Some weirdo in my neighborhood obviously puts copious amounts of peanuts out for the squirrels. How do I know this? Because the idiotic critters bury them everywhere and every spring there are peanut plants popping up in every flower bed. I think this year I’m going to grub them up intact and establish a patch of them, see if I can harvest much of a crop. Squirrels are dopes.
I’ve grown them also, not very successfully in California, much better when I lived in Louisiana.
Delicious with bacon. But don’t let anyone British near them. I had them once in the Barbicon Center in London before a concert, and they were still awful and still boiled.
I didn’t know what brussel sprouts looked like “on the vine” until I planted a couple of innocent looking seedlings.
Imagine my surprise when they turned into mutant baseball bats from hell.
I also didn’t know you’re supposed to trim the tops, I had some four footers by the time summer ended.
Another close relative of the cabbages (different species, but same genus) is rapeseed, AKA canola.
And yes, I know what they look like when growing. My mom’s a serious gardener. And they’ve tasted good for my entire life, if prepared properly (i.e., not British boiled grey mush).
As a kid, I actually mixed up bean sprouts and brussel sprouts. There was all this talk about Brussels sprouts, and then there were these things on the salad bar which I asked what they were, and the main thing I heard was “sprouts.” So, for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why anyone complained about Brussels sprouts. (But since I liked broccoli and spinach, with others seemed to hate, I assumed it was just me.)
When I finally did discover brussel sprouts, I only remember them tasting like small, more potent cabbages. I don’t know if these were the reduced bitter variety. (It would have been in the early to mid 1990s) But I thought they were just okay.
(I intentionally varied between the prescriptive and descriptive spellings of the term throughout the post, for shits and nerdy giggles.)
We did this a few years ago too.
Educate me on one of the finer points of botany, please (Brussels sprouts), OP by kaylasdad99, 5/13/2013.