Welcome to Collard Friday. Since my huge, huge success with beets took only a mere two weeks, I decided to really gamble with collards and try knocking them out in one day. Then I thought I would raise the stakes even further by pushing the one-day battle to the end of the week so if I win, I really, really win, but if I fail, I really, really fail. Living life in the fast lane, that’s what that is right there.
Actually, none of that’s true. I’ve been out of town on business and I’m scared shitless of collards. I considered trying to find a meat-n-three restaurant while I was traveling, so I could get started earlier in the week with the standard, traditional, boiled mush version, but I’ve had traditional collards before (they’re nearly unavoidable on New Year’s Day around here) and I’m pretty sure I hate them. So instead I mostly ate cookies and milk from room service (milk does a body good just as much as vegetables, so suck it, naysayers) and am now crossing my fingers that I can come up with a palatable way of preparing collards.
(Ellllwoooooood?)
Julie vs. Vegetables 
If you do wind up boiling the collards (or however you cook those things), BE SURE to get some Texas Pete Hot Sauce to put on them. It makes them….palatable. I’ve only had them with a meat & 3 with somebody else doing the cooking…..and mostly just in an effort to do my body good!
Call my grandma. She cooks them all the time. And, we might have some in our freezer. She uses LOTS of pork products in them. Lots. We use turkey bacon, which isn’t the same, but delicious anyway. We like collards okay, but I think turnips are better. Also, I agree with having a hot sauce. We use my grandma’s pepper sauce, which is basically peppers in a jar with vinegar for a long time…with maybe some sugar or salt or something in it…again, call my grandma.
When is kale week? Kale kicks ass.
Pork is a must to make them savory. They are freaking bitter, so you gotta kill that. And they smell bad. 2 strikes against collard greens. But you add delicious pork to them, so they have to be alright in some ways…
Honestly, this is an area of cooking I usually avoid at all costs, because I am not a fan of collard greens either (full fledged yankee here). I don’t know really anything that doesn’t encompass some sort of boiling of the greens.
Pork is your savior here…and I think chicken broth can help you as well.
2 quarts chicken broth
3 bay leaves
2 smoked ham hocks
4-6 bunches of collard greens
s&p (a pinch or so each)
-Heat broth (don’t boil it yet, just get it nice and steaming…maybe just under a simmer)
-Add everything else
-Broth should cover the greens, if it doesn’t, add more until it does
-Now bring it to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 3 hours
-Remove bay leaves
-Add hot sauce (the stuff I made for you should do…or whatever brand you like…) OR you can use red pepper flakes to taste.
The key is a slow, long simmer to extract all of the porky goodness out of the hocks. You can do this with smoked turkey as well, but turkey just isn’t pork.
OH yeah, while I am thinking of beer…get a nice light or amber beer, and put that in there with the broth. Beer makes everything better, just like pork.
I’ve heard of people putting maples syrup on them when cooking… sauteeing in garlic, salt, red pepper flakes and finishing with a dash of maple syrup… maples syrup makes many things better
maple syrup even makes bacon better.
But that shit must be more expensive than gold down south.
Canadian and New Hampshire is shite, VERMONT RULES!
(that was for you DP)
Wow, is that what you have to do to make these lettuce leaves taste decent? Put pork and bacon and maple syrup and hot sauce on them? Gross. Might as well sub your collards with steel cut oatmeal. I realize it was maybe all someone could get for veggies back in the day, but not anymore. I have to wonder…if they taste so bad; why eat them at all? Even Minnesotans have chucked the lutefisk in favor of chicken of the sea! 🙂
If a food item requires all of these disguises and masking tastes why both with the fucking thing in the first place? I say just don’t pick it, or let the squirrels eat it (though they probably pass it up for pine straw). We don’t try to rationalize how really good fallen leaves taste when crushed up with pork, butter, hot sauce and vinegar and covered in maple syrup with a dollop of vanilla ice cream on the side. Our dog eats poo. Doesn’t mean we eat poo.