One of the problems with ripping recipes out of magazines and putting them in my Big Blue Binder is that, occasionally, I miss the overall point of a group of recipes, focusing mainly on the one that sounds interesting to me at the time. So, when I decided to make Asian Brussels Sprouts Salad as seen in the free Hannaford magazine I focused on making a tasty-sounding, vegetarian dish that might be easy to put together in the heat we lived through last month. I didn’t, however, focus on the fact that this might actually be more of a side dish than a main meal.

Of course, I didn’t realize that until I was already knuckle deep in Brussels sprout shavings, but what are you gonna do? As I realized when I made Pasta With Chicken & Brussels Sprouts, the sprouts are basically like tiny cabbages once you start cutting them up. I should have made that connection again and realized this is basically a cole slaw with an Asian kick, much like the side salad I wrote about earlier this week when I talked about the Crispy Sesame-Panko Chicken.

Anyway, we wound up eating this for dinner and it was pretty good, but as I’ve hinted at, would make a much better addition to a meal than a meal itself.  As the recipe suggests, I shredded the full pound of Brussels sprouts by hand on the box shredder, but my wife had a great suggestion that I’ll try next time: run them through the meat grinder. I’ve never used my grinder for anything but meat, but I don’t see why that wouldn’t work out smashingly, but if you do, let me know in the comment section.

With that out of the way, you simply mix the dressing ingredients together in a jar, throw in some peanuts and herbs and mix everything together. While I thought this was good the first day, the sour lime and salty soy flavors developed a lot more in the leftover portion of its existence making for a more powerful punch. I’d recommend making this a few hours — if not a day — in advance for that reason.