Is there a way to cook Collard Greens without muddying their green color?

Don’t cook them for so long… Chop them or cut them into thin slices to minimize the time needed to cook. Southern cooking was developed with a great suspicion of vegetables. But now that our water supply is safer, there is no need to cook greens nearly as long as most recipes specify.
I just cooked up some chopped collards and black eyed peas a few days ago, and the greens stayed green because I chopped them very small and took them off the heat in about 10–12 minutes.
Also, I’m not certain, but lemon juice or another acid might also help preserve their color.

Thanks, @bookish1. Collards and black-eyed peas sounds scrumptious.

Growing up in the South, it’s amazing I even liked vegetables like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and asparagus; which were all cooked till they were nothing but mush. I never knew how good they could be till I moved to California and learned that it really wasn’t necessary to cremate them in cooking.

@ETpro : Glad to help. It was indeed delicious, and the first dish I cooked to celebrate the end of exams! I never thought I liked Southern cooking until I realized that it’s not necessary to cook everything into submission. (I cheat on the use of lard as well, haha.)

You might also remove the stems which take much longer to cook than the leaves.

You guys are killin me here. Collards, black eyed peas… the New Year good luck dishes. But you know, it has to be deadly to be good southern cooking, right? You take a perfectly healthy vegetable and convert it into a heart attack on a platter or it’s not genuinely southern. You know this, right? ET, you should, comin from the Chesapeake—to hell with the color, boy.

God, I miss my mom’s recipe. (I had to pull this off the net, but it looks about right):

2 tbsp butter
1 large yellow onion (peeled and sliced thin)
2 bunches collard greens (stems removed, trimmed and chopped)
1 cup heavy cream
Freshly grated nutmeg (to taste)
Salt to taste

(Use butter from grass-fed cows only and unrefined sea salt, if ya’ll wanna git all la-dee-da.)

Instructions
1.Melt butter in a skillet over a moderately high flame until it froths, then toss in sliced yellow onion, frying in melted butter until fragrant and a bit caramelized around the edges.

2.Add chopped collard greens to the skillet, stirring until slightly wilted, about two minutes.

3.Reduce the heat to medium-low, stir in one cup heavy cream and simmer for about five to six minutes, until the cream is largely reduced.

4.Season with freshly grated nutmeg and unrefined sea salt as it suits you and serve hot.

But the Swedes use kale, and take it into afterburn for their Christmas meal:
(Makes 6 to 8 side dishes of this yuletide treat)
1 kg chopped kale or collards
3 cups ham broth
2 tablespoons Butter
3 cups heavy cream
1 / 2 tsp salt
2 pinches of black pepper
1 tsp caster sugar

Prep the collards as above.
Cook chopped collards in ham broth for 10 mins.
Drain with sieve
Saute in butter in bottom of saucepan
Add the cream and simmer over low heat about 15 minutes. Stir occasionally. Season with salt, pepper and sugar.

Lycka Till! (That means good luck ET, you dirty old bastard.)

These two recipes are the best collard greens I ever had in my life. Mom did some mean black eyed peas as well, if you guys are interested.

^^^Jeez: anything cooked with heavy cream, butter, sugar and ham broth tastes delicious. The point of being good and eating your greens is to avoid the fats and sugars, and simply eat your greens.

My sister sautes them in garlic and a little EVOO in a cast-iron pan. Then there is no issue of the bright green color, but they are tasty (as are most things sauteed in garlic and EVOO.)

I like my collards raw so I do a lot of salads with them.

This recipe is close to one I use a lot, it comes from Eating Bird Food.

Raw Collard Green Salad

Print

Prep time

15 mins

Total time

15 mins

Adapted from The Daily Raw Cafe

Serves: 4

Ingredients
•1 bunch collard greens, washed
•⅛ cup olive oil
•¼ teaspoon sea salt
•¼ cup apple cider vinegar
•6–8 chopped sun-dried tomatoes
•⅓ cup onion, chopped
•1–3 cloves raw garlic, minced
•1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
•½ teaspoon black pepper

Instructions
1.De-stem and chop the collard greens. An easy way to de-stem collard greens is by folding them in half lengthwise along the stem with the darker green side down and then pull up the stem until it comes off and you’re left mostly with leaf. An easy way to chop the collards is to stack a few leaves, roll them up into a cigar shape and cut the through the collard cylinder, making strips.
2.Place strips in a large bowl. Pour olive oil on collard strips and sprinkle on salt. Massage the oil and salt into the strips with your hands until all pieces are well coated.
3.Whisk together apple cider vinegar, sun-dried tomatoes, onions, garlic, red pepper flakes and ground pepper.
4.Pour apple cider vinegar dressing over the collard green strips. Let marinate in the refrigerator for at least 3–4 hours, but overnight is best.

^^^ Do you slice the greens really thin, what the French call juliennne? Eating it raw is an interesting concept. If you slice beets raw enough, you can also eat them raw.

Good cutting tip also. Thanks

@gailcalled All kidding aside: you are right. These fine dishes, folkified inheritances I suspect from the grand 19th century traditions of Carême and Escoffier, were not to be eaten frequently. They are for the feast. But Americans, posessors of a food-rich nation, are able to eat this stuff way too often, thus suffering diseases formerly reserved for the royal and wealthy, giving the cuisine a unjustly bad reputation. (In over-compensation, they scream loud and long of the evils of this cuisine. You don’t hear this caterwauling in France, outside of a minority of neurotic pedants, and neither do you have the same levels of heart disease.)

Even the great Escoffier said his food was not to be eaten daily, like common fare. He was thhe one who took Carême’s tradition to new heights of sinfulness and probably the one man most responsible for the early demise of Edward VII of England, lol. Escoffier himself lived to be 88.

These dishes are to be reserved for special occasions and that rare night you find yourself alone and in need of comfort food. In lieu of sitting in front of the TV with a gallon of Edy’s Cookies & Cream, why not entertain one’s self with some real food while practicing the art of actually preparing it yourself? Like alcohol, it only kills you if you have no self control. In the meantime, I agree, eat your vegetables.

edit: “If you slice beets really thin enough…”

@Espiritus_Corvus; Nicely put. Remember also (which I am sure you do) the traditional French concept of portion control. One scoop of ice cream in Paris was always this little baby size, according to Ben and Jerry.

(I have just finished a bio of Thomas Jefferson. Some of the normal dinners served up at Monticello would have had a Sumo wrestler weeping.

Cooking the old-fashioned Julia Child way is at the bottom of my “things-I-want-to-treat-myself to” list. Having cooked for the masses (five children and a spouse” for decades, I have hung up my apron.

I do remember making a Charlotte Malakof (including home-made lady fingers), coq au vin, boeuf bourgignon, and a spring lamb stew from The Art of French Cooking. Julia kept instructing the reader to finish off almost every dish with a “dollop of butter about the size of a pigeon’s egg.” I am sure that the pigeon died of coronary heart disease.

@ETpro This Article (with video) explains that you need to blanch your greens with a wee bit of salt. You’ll like this article, because it’s all scientificky and stuff : )

We sautée our greens in olive oil and garlic until wilted. We might mix in other ingredients or various seasonings depending on what else we’re cooking to go with it. While we still have our own teeth, we’re ok with the somewhat tougher texture. Cooking it until it’s softer often leeches out what makes them nutritious anyway.

Green smoothies are very popular nowadays, that’s another way to get a lot of color and the corresponding nutrients in your body.