Simple Tips For Cooking Collard Greens

Quick Tips For Cooking Collard Greens

Collard greens (Brassica oleracea) are loose-leaved like kale and spinach. You can eat them raw, although they are much better when prepared.

Collard greens prepare relatively quickly and are best sauteed in olive oil. However, if you are not a vegetarian, you can try preparing them with bacon for added taste. This is my favored way of cooking them. Merely heat some oil in a fry pan and prepare the sliced up bacon initially, until it is crispy. Then remove it from the heat and crumble it before putting it back in the pan.

Next add the kale and cover it with chicken stock, adding red pepper flakes and spices. Simmer for about 45 minutes or less, until the greens hurt. If you wish to cook the greens quickly, slice them into medium-sized pieces and add olive oil to a frying pan. When it's hot include the ingredients you intend using. You can add chopped garlic and red pepper flakes to enliven the rather dull taste of the collard greens. Add the greens to the pan and saute them for about four minutes, or until they are bright green.

If you have a sluggish cooker you can prepare the greens with ham hocks for a southern-style meal. Use chicken stock and spices to boost the tastes. It's best to cook this meal over night. Beware when eliminating the ham hocks as you don't wish to leave any slivers of bone in the greens. Then stir them. Let the hocks cool before attempting to handle them. You need to get rid of all the fat from the hocks and obviously, eliminate the bone from each hock.

Put the meat back into the sluggish cooker and add the greens, stirring them so that the meat and vegetables are integrated well. You might want to reheat the mix before serving this standard Southern-style dish.

If you are vegetarian, stick with the garlic and red pepper flakes and, naturally the greens, but include chopped spring onions, and some other greens, such as kale, and turnip and mustard greens. These go very well together and some sliced tomatoes would also help to boost the taste. To spice them up a little, you can add tamari, or the more typical soy sauce, smoked paprika (or hot paprika), and flavoring.

These green leaves are extremely nutritious, including, as they do vitamins K, A, E and B complex ones. As for minerals they have iron, manganese, and calcium, to name just a few. Why not prepare some and give yourself a healthy reward?

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