NEVER Boil Your Greens Again — Try This Old FARM Trick

Find All my recipes in one place! Otis Granger Cook Book: https://otisgranger.com/ There's a pot of greens on a stove somewhere right now. An hour in, the kitchen smells like sulfur, and they're coming out the color of an old army blanket, in a bowl of green water, and half the family's going to pass them. It isn't your fault. Somebody told you greens get boiled. In the kitchen drawer of almost every farmhouse I clear there's a steel tool with a forked tip. The family says it was Dad's, for the dandelions in the yard. In the German houses in our county, it was for supper. I'm Otis. Forty years of barns and estate auctions across the Midwest, and the kitchen is the last room I clear. My mother put greens on the table for eleven people more nights than not — bright green, shining, tasting like bacon — and she never boiled them. In this one: 1 — the greens: tough ones and tender ones, and why she mixed them 2 — the wash: three waters, and lift them out, never pour 3 — the stems: strip them, and cut ribbons 4 — what boiling actually does (the color, the smell, and what goes down the drain) 5 — the bitter: you don't boil it out, you balance it 6 — the bacon, cut first and cooked slow 7 — the order: tough greens in, tender greens on top 8 — what she poured over them, which I've never once seen in a modern kitchen Hot bacon dressing: bacon grease, cider vinegar, a spoon of sugar, salt and pepper, boiled one minute and poured over the greens in the skillet. They wilt in seconds. That's the farm trick. Honest, said plainly in the video: the Southern pot of greens with a ham hock is a real, good tradition, and this isn't a word against it. Taste the dressing and adjust it. And only pick dandelions from ground that's never been sprayed, away from roads. Did your mother boil greens, wilt them, or cook them long with a ham hock — and what did your family call that dressing? Tell me, and tell me her name. I read every one.