They're a brassica, so taste a bit mustardy. The leaves of both have more substance than mustard leaves and the plants are more cold hardy. I still have live collard plants in my garden but didn't get to cook them as the deer found them mid-Dec. just as they got big enough to cook. We like them boiled with salt and pepper and served with a splash of vinegar or pepper sauce. One traditional way to cook them is with a hambone. Dawn will have a detailed recipe probably as she is a self-proclaimed southern cook.

Personally, I like my greens a little more al dente, so I usually just saute them in some olive oil with some minced garlic and lemon juice until wilted. I think they retain more vitamins and flavor when sauteing as opposed to boiling, but I think maybe boiling is the more traditional way. Collard greens are a different story...i've never eaten them or cooked them, so I can't help you there.

-Matt

I cook greens but it is one of those throw together recipes no real measurements. This is how my grandma taught me the first time I made them before I turned it into my way of cooking which is just throw it together...lol.

1 bunch of greens (tough stems cut out)
1 large onion
1 clove of garlic (more if you want)
1/4 cup of vinegar
2 hot peppers (more if you want)
2 large ham hocks or bacon or ham bone
1/4 cup of chicken broth ( not bullion it will be too salty)

Saute onion and garlic in a large pot. Mix broth, vinegar and chopped peppers together and add to onion and garlic.
Add hocks and greens and stir until greens are wilted and lower heat and cover pot and let cook for about 2 hrs. Stir every once and a while and taste to see if you want to add anything else.

You can search on recipezaar.com for other recipes also.

I love to cook now I have to learn to cook healthy because hubby is on a health kick now so either him or the bacon has to go....man I love cooking with bacon grease.

Dorothy knows me well. I learned to cook from my southern aunts and my grandmother and from my dad, because my mom really didn't like cooking. So, everything I cook is southern style, which means added fat, salt and sugar. I can, by the way, cook healthy, omitting most of the salt and all the sugar and using olive oil instead of bacon drippings, but I generally don't.

Well, you know, being a southern cook I like to use some sort of pork....we southern girls just gotta have our pig fat. So, you can use bacon or bacon drippings, salt pork, hog jowls, a couple of slices of ham or some Eckrich sausage or whatever....and, Dorothy, notice that I didn't even mention you could serve them with chittlin' corn bread or cracklin' corn bread. Nor did I mention pig's feet. LOL

Here's how I fix collard greens:

Pick a mess of collard greens--say, about 2 or 3 lbs. of them. Discard any wilted or yellow leaves. Wash then and rinse them really, really well. It can take several rinsings to remove all the soil and you don't want your greens to feel gritty when you eat them.

In general, you can cook them by simmering them in a pan of water until they are tender. Be sure to stir occasionally.

To about 2 or 3 lbs. of collard greens, I'd add a hamhock or hambone or about 1/ 2 lb. of ham. Add between 1/2 and 1 teaspoon of salt or your favorite salt substitute. Simmer until tender. Taste them. If they seem a little bitter to you, you can stir in a small amount of sugar...maybe a half or full teaspoon. Serve with cornbread and use the cornbread to sop up the liquid on the plate.

Here's a recipe from an old Southern Living cookbook for
Ocracoke Collard Greens:

1 bunch collard greens, about 3 1/2 lbs., cleaned and drained (you can spin them in a salad spinner to help them drain more quickly)
1/2 lb. salt pork or ham, cubed
1 teaspoon salt
4 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered

Place the collard greens, salt pork, and enough water to cover the collards and salt pork in a large dutch oven. Bring to a rapid boil. Reduce heat to low, place lid on dutch oven and simmer for 1 and 1/2 hours. Add the quartered potatoes, cover the pot and simmer for about 25-30 minutes longer, or until potatoes are just fork tender. (Don't simmer too long or the potatoes will dissolve.) This serves 6 to 8.

It is pretty much a law in the south that southern-style greens always must be eaten with cornbread. It also is a law that if you cook turnip greens, you are required to chop up an onion and a turnip and cook them with the greens.

You can use any kind of cornbread as an accompaniment to your mess of greens. One old southern favorite is Crackling Cornbread. In the olden days when folks slaughtered their own hogs, you used the chitterlings (pronounced 'chitlins') from them but you also could use the skin from a chicken, commonly called cracklings. (If you want to know how to make cracklins' from chicken skin, let me know.) I use a thoroughly modern recipe that substitutes bacon for chitlins' or cracklins' although, if you actually have chitlins' or cracklins', feel free to substitute them for the bacon in this recipe.

Crackling Cornbread

1/4 C. plus T. bacon drippings
2 cups cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, well-beaten (being a southern country girl, I use fresh ones from the henhouse which, of course, houses a lovely collection of southern hens and roosters)
2 cups buttermilk (you can use regular milk, but it won't be as tasty)
3/4 C. to 1 cup crumbled cooked bacon, or an equivalent amount of chitterlings or cracklings.

Place 1/4 cup of bacon drippings in a 10" cast-iron skillet. Heat it up in an oven preheated to 450 degrees. As it is heating, combine the cornmeal, baking soda and salt and mix well. Melt the remaining 2 T. of bacon drippings (I pop them into the microwave in a coffee cup) and combine them and the 2 eggs with the buttermilk. Stir well to combine the wet ingredients and then add to the bowl containing the dry ingredients. Stir to blend well, and then stir in the crumbled bacon, chitterlings or cracklings. Pour into the pre-heated cast-iron skillet and bake at 450 degrees for 25 minutes, or until top of cornbread is a nice golden-brown. Serves about 8 normal people or 4 hungry gardeners or farm hands.

If you don't have a cast iron pan in which to cook the cornbread, you can use a regular baking pan and if you're trying to avoid the fats in the bacon dripppings (oops, the southern gal in me almost said pig fat instead of bacon drippings), you can spray the baking pan with PAM. It won't be quite as good, but it will be edible. LOL

You can cook about any green using the above receipes, and just substitute spinach or kale or whatever for the collards. If you like soup, I have a recipe around here somewhere for kale-sausage soup. You can use Swiss Chard in virtually any recipe that calls for spinach, like boiled spinach or creamed spinach.

If you need a recipe for creamed spinach or kale-sausage soup, let me know.

There, I hope that gets you started on a successful career in (a) cooking greens, (b) making Crackling Corn Bread, and (c) southernizing your cooking style.

Oh, and they are great sautee'd as Matt cooks them, and it is much healthier than the way I fix them.

Dawn

Oh my Dawn, I just LOVE crackling cornbread. Haven't had any for a while, hard to find cracklings in a store anymore. If you can find them Mac's Cracklings are good and what I use. Will have to give your recipe a try next time I find them.

Cracklings are hard to find. As my daddy used to say with great relish "Them's good eatin'!".

I tried the whole healthy-cooking, healthy-eating low-fat thing in the 1980s but by the mid-1990s had reverted to cooking and eating the old southern way. Nowadays I try to cook and eat healthy some of the time, and cook and eat southern the rest of the time. All things in moderation.

Paula Dean is my hero because she cooks the way I was taught to cook. I love her cookbooks. I don't always add bacon drippings to fresh vegetables when I cook them, sometimes I like to sautee' green beans in olive oil with a little garlic. May favorite ways to cook veggies, though, always involve some combination of onions, salt, butter or bacon drippings.

Dawn

Thanks everyone. I'll probably try it both ways :-) I'm glad I know what to do with it when it's ready to harvest. LOL...I show my California roots by not really having a clue huh?

I'm trying that cornbread recipe too cause it looks a lot yummier than mine.

Mandy

Okay I'm getting hungry now and Dawn your recipes sound great I am going to try the cornbread tonight.
Jeana