Ah, broccoli! For many kids, and even for me as a picky adult, it was the stuff of nightmares. Sure, there were other foods I disliked more, but broccoli was still a top contender on my list of veggies to avoid. Before I began my kitchen experiments, this vegetable never made it onto my plate because I found everything about it unpalatable. From the bitter taste to the “weird” texture, I enjoyed nothing about broccoli.

Learning to like broccoli involved a significant shift in perspective, lots of research, experimenting, and a bit of self-guided behavioral cognitive therapy. That’s right, I was my own guinea pig. But that’s good for you because this picky eater has the tips and tricks on learning to like broccoli so that you don’t have to go through as much pain as I did. So, what does broccoli taste like, and how can you start to like it? 

Join me as I share my journey from wrinkling my nose at this food to discovering methods that transformed it into a veggie I enjoy. Whether you’re dealing with a texture issue or can’t get past the flavor, I’ve got you covered. 

1. Nutritional Benefits of Broccoli
2. Broccoli Taste & Texture
3. Picky Eater Approved Broccoli Recipes
4. How I Learned To Like Broccoli

Nutritional Benefits of Broccoli

Alright, let’s jump into my favorite topic: nutrition! I’m not a dietitian, but I’ve spent a lot of time researching the nutritional value of vegetables. As a picky eater, one thing that always bothered me was not knowing much about new foods. Learning about the vitamins, minerals, and fiber in foods I hadn’t tried yet helped ease my anxiety about trying them. It even made me excited to think I was giving my body what it needs—especially fiber, since gut health is very important to me.

So, why is broccoli good for you? 

Key Nutrients in Broccoli

• Vitamin C: Helps your body heal wounds and fight off infection, and is also great for skin and gum health.
• Vitamin K: Helps your blood clot, so that you stop bleeding if you are cut or scraped. This vitamin is also important for keeping your bones strong!
• Folate (Vitamin B9): This nutrient is important for making new cells, which is particularly vital for pregnant women. It is essential to get plenty of folate during pregnancy to prevent defects in the baby’s brain and spine.
• Potassium: This mineral helps your nerves function and muscles to move. It also assists in heart health, lowers blood pressure, and balances out the salt in your body. Getting plenty of potassium is also recommended to help with symptoms of anxiety and depression!
• Fiber: Fiber helps keep your digestion going smoothly, so you don’t get constipated. It also helps you feel full, which can help you maintain a healthy weight.
• Iron: Iron is crucial because it helps make hemoglobin, the part of your blood that carries oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body. If you don’t have enough iron, you might feel tired and weak.
• Calcium: Famous for building strong bones and teeth, calcium is especially important as you grow and as you get older, to keep your bones healthy.
• Magnesium: This mineral is a jack-of-all-trades. It helps with hundreds of things in your body, like keeping your heart rhythm steady, supporting a healthy immune system, and making sure your muscles and nerves work properly.

Long-Term Benefits of Eating Broccoli

Because cauliflower is so rich in nutrients, there are several long-term benefits to incorporating this vegetable into your diet.

• Fights Cancer: Broccoli is rich in a compound called sulforaphane, which fights cancer. This compound helps protect against many types of cancer, including breast, prostate, lung, and colon cancer. Additionally, broccoli contains indole-3-carbinol (I3C), which also helps prevent cancer!
• Anti-Inflammatory Properties: Broccoli is rich in anti-inflammatories, which are great for preventing chronic inflammation. The nutrients found in broccoli lower cholesterol, maintain proper blood pressure, and promote heart health!
• Boosts The Immune System: Broccoli is a nutrient powerhouse that helps fight chronic disease. Its high Vitamin C content strengthens the immune system and promotes collagen production, wound healing, and iron absorption.
• Bone Health: Since broccoli is rich in calcium, incorporating this veggie into your diet is a great way to keep your bones strong. This is important because strong bones do not break as easily, which reduces your chances of fractures or breaks.
• Eye Health: The high content of Vitamin A and antioxidants in broccoli promotes healthy eyes and may prevent age-related loss of vision and cataracts! 

Broccoli Taste & Texture

When I started heavily researching foods, one thing I did was research what the food tastes like. Since picky eaters often struggle with a fear of the unknown, seeking out knowledge on a new food’s taste and texture made me feel more at ease and prepared me for what I would experience for the first time.

Researching food was a huge help in opening my mind to new foods. It helped me understand when I’d made a food correctly and just didn’t like it, or if I needed to give it another shot. So, if you’re in the same boat I was, here’s a comprehensive guide on what broccoli tastes like!

What Does Roasted Broccoli Taste Like?

Roasted broccoli is by far my favorite way to prepare this veggie. It’s incredibly simple yet turns out so flavorful! To roast broccoli, I chop the florets into medium-sized pieces, ensuring there’s a flat side to lay on the sheet pan. Using parchment paper instead of tin foil is essential, as tin foil can cause uneven cooking.

This chopping method creates a flat cooking surface, helping the florets cook evenly and caramelize beautifully. When roasted, the broccoli should be fork-tender with slightly charred tops. The taste is slightly nutty and earthy, with a hint of sweetness, and it takes on the flavors of the spices and oil you use. Its texture is tender, with a slight crunch if cooked for a shorter time, but I prefer it fork-tender without any crunch, so I roast my broccoli for 25 to 30 minutes, which is a little longer than most recipes recommend.

What Does Steamed Broccoli Taste Like?

Steaming broccoli is a popular, quick, and easy method to prepare this vegetable. To steam broccoli, bring a pot of water to a rolling boil, place chopped florets into a steaming basket, cover, and cook for 10-15 minutes. Usually, steamed broccoli is seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

Steamed broccoli has a fresh, earthy flavor, but it can turn bitter if overcooked. When done right, it’s tender with a slight crunch, making it a healthy and simple side dish. The taste is mild, allowing the natural flavor of the broccoli to shine through. However, improper cooking can result in a mushy and unpleasantly bitter texture. Steaming is a great option if you prefer a more natural, unaltered taste and a crisp-tender texture.

A word of caution: Steamed broccoli at restaurants can taste much better than at home. This is often because restaurants use a lot of salt and butter – sometimes an almost offensive amount. Most home cooks don’t use as much, leading to a different, frustrating experience. Keep this in mind if you’re trying to replicate that restaurant flavor at home.

What Does Boiled Broccoli Taste Like?

Boiled broccoli has a soft and tender texture, often more so than steamed or roasted broccoli. The flavor can be mild and slightly sweet, but it can also become bland and lose some of its natural earthy taste. If overcooked, boiled broccoli can become mushy and develop a somewhat unpleasant, sulfur-like bitterness. Boiling is a quick and easy method, but it often requires seasoning with salt, pepper, and butter to enhance the flavor. While it may not be the most exciting way to prepare broccoli, it’s a simple option if you prefer a very tender vegetable.

Boiling broccoli is how I got started with this vegetable! If you’re sensitive to the crunchy texture of vegetables, I highly recommend starting here. Boiled broccoli is very tender and soft, making it easier to eat if you have a mental block against crunchier veggies. Over time, as your comfort with broccoli grows, you can work your way up to more solid versions. And I promise, your tastes will evolve, and you won’t be eating baby food forever.

Picky Eater Approved Broccoli Recipes

So, the reason that I go through the texture and taste of roasted, steamed, and boiled broccoli is because these are the preliminary steps to most recipes that involve broccoli. When you understand these basic elements, it is much easier to approach broccoli as an ingredient and as its own dish. Here are some picky eater approved recipes that I love to incorporate broccoli into:

• Crockpot Dumpling Soup: For this recipe, I like to swap out the peas and carrots for cauliflower and broccoli. When cooked in a crockpot, the broccoli gets so tender that it practically falls apart! And it takes on the flavor of the rest of the soup, so this is honestly a recipe that totally masks the flavor of the vegetables. I highly recommend recipes like this if you are just getting started with broccoli.
• Oven Roasted Broccoli: I love, love, love roasted broccoli. This is how I prepare my broccoli every week, and it never fails to impress my husband or guests. The only person who doesn’t eat it is my dad, who still hasn’t quite jumped on the green food train. Don’t let him fool you though, he drinks kale smoothies. I know you’re reading this, Daddy. Hi!
• Chicken Pot Pie: This is another where recipe I like to swap the peas out for broccoli. I don’t love peas, so this is a swap I make pretty often! Like pretty much any soup, chicken pot pie masks the taste and texture of broccoli very well. Before I put the broccoli into my chicken pot pie, I like to boil it for 5 minutes to make sure that it gets nice and tender in my pie. It always turns out great!

How I Learned to Like Broccoli

I really struggled with broccoli, much like I did with cauliflower.  Although I technically learned to tolerate broccoli much sooner than cauliflower, I would say that it took a lot more tries to come around to broccoli. 

That’s because I made the same mistake that I made with cauliflower – I started with substitutions.

Well… Technically, I started with burning the ever-loving crap out of it. I think I must have been 19 at the time, back when I was getting pretty much all of my vegetable intake from green beans and spinach smoothies. Which was still better than nothing! 

I was home for the summer from college, and my mom and I were both experimenting with eating cleaner. To her total surprise, I decided that I wanted to try broccoli and she enthusiastically bought me a stalk from the grocery store. The fact that I was experimenting with vegetables was something she wanted to support. Plus, she liked broccoli! So, no matter what, it would get eaten.

Still, I was anxious about trying broccoli. It was new, totally unfamiliar, and this was before my research-heavy days. So, I had no idea what to expect going into it except for my own distorted perception. Now, I know that this is not a great head-space for a picky eater to be in before trying a new food.

Since I was still so new to cooking, I mistakenly thought that if I just chopped the broccoli up super small, I’d enjoy it more. The goal was to help the broccoli crisp up by giving it less surface area to cook. The logic was there… kind of. I actually follow the same school of thought now when I cook broccoli, but there was a fundamental flaw in the way I prepared it that day: 

I chopped the florets way too small. 

I was more than shocked when I pulled the charred broccoli out of the oven. But I still tried a bite. Good for you, past me! Oh man, it was super bitter. As I chewed the charred florets, I forced the corners of my mouth into a twisted imposter of a smile. 

“It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever tasted,” My go-to line when I don’t like something but don’t want to admit it. It was pretty bad. Of all the recipes I’ve screwed up, this was probably the worst. Since I desperately wanted to like new foods, I usually tried to mind-over-matter the disgust. On top of that, I had no idea that this was not how broccoli should taste. But then I mulled it over as I forced myself to swallow… and said “Well, I gave it a shot!” and I decided that I just didn’t like broccoli. 

So, that was the first and last time I tried broccoli for a long while. Face-palm.

3 Years Later I Tried Broccoli Again

Then I tried substituting my favorite foods with it. Oh yeah, it got way worse than that first awful experience. Thinking back, I’m honestly shocked I ever gave broccoli another shot at the spotlight after my next failed attempts. If you read my blog on cauliflower, you’ll know that I attempted to substitute cauliflower with my beloved potatoes. Would you believe I tried this with broccoli first? 

Oh, yeah. And it was bad. I went through a rough patch of my food journey where I was feeling very fearful of new foods, but also concerned with the long-term health implications that could come with my current limited diet. So, I turned to the internet for some healthy swaps. When I stumbled upon several variations of broccoli tots and patties, I decided that I had to try them. 

I mean, the recipe said it was delicious! Their kids “gobble it up”! And people on the internet don’t lie. So, why not?

Broccoli Tots Suck

First of all, making a broccoli tot is a pain. It’s messy, and they don’t stick together well. The level of frustration I felt as I painstakingly patted out each tot all while knowing it was unlikely to have a good payout was a bad setup anyway. And it felt as though every tot I put together fell apart right in front of me as I crafted the next one. 

Then, there was the smell. As they roasted in the oven, they just did not smell appetizing. It’s difficult to describe now since it was so long ago, but I recall my stomach turning and knowing that my experiment was definitely going wrong. That’s not what the internet said it would smell like!

When the sad blobs of broccoli came out of the oven, I was not enthused. They smelled and looked revolting. Not only did this recipe probably just suck, but I think I burned them too. I snicker now, but this was disheartening at the time. At the time, I’d instituted the good ol’ “You have to try one bite!” rule with myself, so I gave it a single nibble. And it was just as bad as I thought it would be. 

And then my husband, in true army fashion, ate the rest of the pan. “It’s fine!” he said. But he didn’t complain when I never made that recipe again.

Luckily, I Was Determined to Find a Way

The very next time we went to the grocery store, I picked up another head of broccoli. I’d gone back to the drawing board and done some more research. I also did some soul-searching on how I liked my other vegetables cooked and realized that I love my green beans cooked until they’re so soft they melt in your mouth. That’s the only right way to have green beans. Maybe I’d feel that way about broccoli too!

Feeling emboldened by further research, and a better pulse on my own preferences, I was excited to give broccoli another shot. And this time, I got much better results! I planned to make stir-fry with broccoli, a pepper mix, and rice. I started by blanching the broccoli in boiling water for two minutes and transferred them to a hot pan with the other vegetables and olive oil.

I must have cooked that meal forever, waiting for my vegetables to get soft enough that I believed I would like them more. At least this time, the food smelled great. Once my vegetables were extremely tender, I took them off the heat and served them with rice.

I Found Tolerance!

And that was the first time I found broccoli to be tolerable. I was extremely excited! So, this was the way that we ate broccoli for a long time. It wasn’t my husband’s favorite way to eat broccoli – he said he preferred to chew his food – but he tolerated the mushy broccoli since it was how I enjoyed it, and I was the one cooking.

But although I now tolerated broccoli cooked in a rather unconventional way, it still wasn’t a way that I would ever have it served to me in a conventional setting. I am not exaggerating when I say we were literally eating broccoli mush. 

But since I was at a point in my food journey where I was frustrated at myself and food, I was satisfied with this small win. Although I’d reached a sort of truce with this vegetable, I still found it fading out of our day-to-day life. It wasn’t my favorite, and my husband wasn’t thrilled with it either, so I didn’t buy it very often. 

An Influencer Convinced Me To Try Broccoli Again

During a late-night scrolling session, I came across a new influencer sharing her tips for swapping out buttery and salty popcorn for roasted broccoli, seasoned the same way she would season her popcorn. She reasoned that she found that she wasn’t craving the popcorn, she was craving the salt, butter, and crunch. She claimed that for a snack, she’d devour sheets of broccoli and that this worked for her.

“Bullshit” I scoffed. But she made the broccoli look so good, that the idea stuck. I saved the video, and went down a rabbithole of roasted broccoli recipes. The distant memory of charred florets sill burned into my mind, I was not convinced that she was telling the truth. Still, I wanted to try it. So the next time I went to the store, I picked out yet another head of broccoli and decided to treat this one right. 

The key to roasting broccoli is this: cutting the florets so that they have a flat bottom, but still leaving them relatively large with as long of a stem as you can. A lot of people cut the stems off of their broccoli, but my thorough research told me that leaving them on is a great way to get delicious, tender broccoli. Oh, and olive oil and seasonings. And you can’t skimp on it!

I Knew Before They Were Finished Cooking

This time, the smell that wafted from my kitchen was completely different from my other broccoli experiments. The smell was slightly nutty, with a hint of sweetness and a subtle, savory undertone. The pungent smell I remembered was much less punchy, and mingled with the caramelized notes just enough to be tolerable. This was promising!

When I pulled the broccoli out of the oven, everything about it was appetizing. From the amazing smell to the dark green color with caramelized edges, it was just awesome. And, god, the pride I felt when I tasted my first successful roasted broccoli recipe was almost supernatural. This was it, a broccoli recipe I truly enjoyed. The influencer wasn’t lying, my husband and I ate the entire pan up.

Man, what an experience. I enjoyed it, my husband got to chew. That was a great night. 

Now, We Eat Broccoli At Least Once a Week

Since that day, my love for roasted broccoli has only grown. It’s been almost two years, and we have eaten roasted broccoli at least once a week. Every single time, I make a big pan of it, and there are no leftovers. My recipe has improved, and my husband occasionally says in awe, something along the lines of “You make vegetables taste like candy!”, which is a huge compliment.

My experience with broccoli inspired me to put pedal to the metal. If I could find a way to like broccoli, a food I’d fought a hard battle with, then there might be ways to enjoy more foods I supposedly did not like.

This journey taught me that sometimes, it’s all about how you prepare the food. With a little research and experimentation, even the most disliked vegetables can become favorites. Now, I approach new foods with an open mind and a sense of adventure, knowing that a a night like that one with roasted broccoli might be around the corner. 

FAQ’s

1. What does broccoli taste like?

The taste of broccoli depends on how it is prepared. Roasted broccoli is slightly nutty and earthy, with a hint of sweetness, and it takes on the flavors of the spices and oil you use. Steamed and boiled broccoli also taste earthy, but these cooking methods do not bring out a sweet flavor. When overcooked, broccoli can take on a mildly bitter taste that some people are more sensitive to due to genetics. 

2.  Does broccoli taste bitter?

Broccoli has a mild, earthy and sweet taste that can sometimes be perceived as bitter due to the compounds that create sulferophane during the cooking process. Your reaction to this taste can be due to genetics, since some people are more sensitive to this compound than others. However, the bitter taste of broccoli can be combatted with seasonings and cooking methods.

3. Is broccoli an acquired taste?

Yes, broccoli is an acquired taste for those who do not initially enjoy the flavor and/or texture of this vegetable. 

4. Why do I not like the taste of broccoli?

Some people are averse to the bitter taste of broccoli due to genetics! However, it is important to note that the bitter taste in broccoli can be intensified by improper cooking methods, which can be off-putting to even the most tolerant of eaters.