Collard Greens
A collards recipe and a quick story about groundhogs, railroad tracks, and stained hands.
The ingredients:
2 large bunches of collards, washed (this is important!!)
1/2 cup diced onion
5 garlic cloves, minced
1-1.5 tbsp. red pepper flakes
4 cups chicken stock
4 ounces pork belly, hog jowl, or high-quality bacon
1 tbsp. white vinegar
2 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
The recipe:
Wash collard greens in warm water. Combine all ingredients over high heat until liquid in pot boils, then reduce heat and let simmer for 1.5-2 hours.
The story:
First off, there’s no better recipe than one that starts and ends with “put it all in a pot and let it cook.” I remember a lot of evenings as a kid when my mom would throw greens into a pot and just let them go. Both of my parents grew up without a lot of resources, so recipes with cheap ingredients were quite popular in their homes. And with our blue-collar family, they snuck their way into our house, too. Greens and beans and cornbread and pork, in particular, were stars.
Now, an admission: id didn’t like any of those things growing up.
That could be for a few reasons, tbh. My greatest guess is a bit of sensory mix-up. There’s another green called “pokeweed” that they used to cook all the time. Pokeweed is that gangly plant with dark purple berries and big green leaves. Growing up, my brother and I used to pick the berries and use them for “potions.” My mom hated that because they’re also really good at staining your school clothes. But the leaves, as it turns out, are edible (so long as you cook them—raw poke leaves are extremely poisonous). On Sundays, we used to go to the railroad tracks and walk them up and down with Kroger bags. My brother and I would pick poke leaves with my mom, while my dad used to shoot groundhogs with his bow. Any time a train would come, Dad would take one of us up to the tracks and place a penny or a nickel down so we had a flattened keepsake after the fact. (Reading this back… I’m just gonna assume we all had the same childhood and not question it).
When we’d get home, she’d boil the poke leaves extra long, and it made the house smell god-awful. In my mind, I think I mixed that up with collard greens, so I’d avoided them for years. But I was judging a food competition down in Greenville, South Carolina and each vendor had to choose one of their dishes to enter. A restaurant chose their collard greens, and I thought, “Wow. That’s bold.” I tried the greens, and they made my top three. More importantly, they made me reconsider my stance on collards and what kind of twist I’d put on my recipe.
So I’ve gotten to work: this collards recipe is all about the spice and the pork. If I can find it, I lean toward hog jowl or pork belly because it’s that slow rendering of the fat that makes the greens so delicious. I also go hard on the red pepper flakes, just to the point that once you’ve finished your helping of greens, you should be asking, “What about that was so spicy?” No one is trying to go on Hot Ones with your side of vegetables, but a gentle kick in the teeth makes dinner more exciting, you know?
I’m happy I got the chance to reassess my stance on greens. Now, poke? That will never be welcome in my home, but the memories of shooting groundhogs and picking the leaves off the sides of the railroad tracks? That remains forever.