Roasted Broccoli with Spicy Bacon Crumbs

Broccoli. I’ve grown to love it, but it certainly didn’t come easy. I can’t really blame myself, though, because my mom always boiled it until it was mushy and a little grey looking and served it plain, maybe with a bit of butter and salt, but that was it. It just wasn’t my thing.

In my 20s I learned to steam it gently so it kept its bright green color and reserved some crispness. It was better. But still not my favorite.

Then one day a few years ago a friend introduced me to garlic roasted broccoli. Now THIS was a broccoli I could get on board with. A little crispy. A little browned, which gave it an almost sweet taste. And garlic? Well, who can complain about that?!

So I started roasting my broccoli – with garlic – and I actually started having an affinity for it. It went with anything – chicken, beef, noodles – and then, because I like things spicy, I started adding chili flakes. Now I was really rockin’ it.

I’ve been eating it that way for years now and loving my broccoli multiple times a week. Even after I started eating Paelo, it was still a regular at my table. One night, I served it to a bunch of friends and one of them joked “don’t you Paleo people put bacon in everything? Why isn’t there bacon in the broccoli?”

It was a lightbulb moment. How could I make my garlic spicy broccoli even better?! The answer was obvious: BACON.

I had to fuss with this for a bit to get it right. I tried bacon chopped into small pieces with a knife. It was ok, but I wanted the bacon to stick to the broccoli and it wasn’t working. I chopped it smaller and smaller until finally one day I threw it into the food processor and ground it up. That was when I recognized I needed a binder – something to make it all stick together.

Dijon mustard was the answer. Not only did it make the bacon stick to the broccoli, but it added a bit of tanginess that complimented the salty-savory-spicy of the bacon garlic chili broccoli perfectly. It’s a perfect bite.

This has really moved broccoli to the next level in my life. It’s gone from a dislike, to a like, to a prefer, to a MUST HAVE. And it’s gone from side dish to – I admit it – stand-alone snack or small meal. When I have leftovers of bacon broccoli (which is at least once a week) I usually eat them for a snack. It the perfect snack: a healthy veggie, full of flavor, and it’s just as good chilled as it is fresh out of the oven. The bacon gives you a bit of protein and of course tons of flavor, the broccoli has all those green veggie good-for-you vitamins (which are preserved by roasting it – you lose them all when you boil it!), and it’s salty and crunchy. Better than potato chips any day!

Broccoli, you’ve come a long way baby!