NEVER Boil Collard Greens Again — Seniors, Try This Old MOUNTAIN Trick

📖 These greens written down with the measures: https://vernasbook.com so you're not guessing at the stove — my printed cookbook ships to your door! Sunday dinner, the good plates are out, and halfway through a forkful of greens your teeth find sand. Or they were bitter, or tough as a shoelace, or a gray green you have never seen on a restaurant plate. None of that was your cooking. It was the boiling. I have seven tricks for you, and the last one explains that gray color. Stay to the end for it. 🍲 MY LONG-COOKED GREENS (serves six, with cornbread) • 3 pounds greens, washed three times (collards, turnip, mustard, or a mix) • 4 ounces salt pork, diced, or 1 smoked ham hock • 1 medium onion, chopped • 6 cups water • 1 teaspoon salt, plus more at the end • 1/2 teaspoon coarse black pepper • 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes • 1 teaspoon sugar • Cider vinegar, at the table 🔥 THE METHOD 1. Stem the collards and roll and cut the leaves into one-inch ribbons. Turnip and young mustard keep their stems. 2. Render the salt pork 6 to 8 minutes. Add the onion, cook 5 minutes. Add the water (and the hock, if that is what you are using), cover, and simmer 30 minutes. That is your broth. 3. Add the greens in handfuls, letting each wilt down. Add the salt, pepper, pepper flakes, and sugar. 4. Hold it at one slow bubble with the lid cocked. Turnip and mustard: 45 minutes to an hour. Collards: an hour to an hour and a half. Done when a piece of stem gives with no resistance. 5. Pull the hock, chop the meat, put it back. Taste the broth and correct the salt. Vinegar goes on the plate, not in the pot. 🥄 WHAT IT COST ME: about $4 to $5 for the collards, $5 to $6 for the hock, and under a dollar for the onion. Roughly $10 to $11 for six. I know that is not what it costs where you shop, so tell me in the comments what a bunch of collards and a ham hock run you. I am a cook, not a doctor. The ham hock already carries a lot of salt, so taste before you add, and ask your doctor what is right for you. If this saves you from one more pot of gray, gritty greens, I would take a subscribe as a personal kindness. It costs you nothing and it helps me keep making these for you. Have a blessed day. -Verna CHAPTERS 0:00 The Sunday dinner mistake 0:29 1. Build the broth first 2:02 My first pot of greens 3:32 2. Wash them three times 4:49 3. Stem them 5:46 4. The fire, and when they are done 7:43 5. Cutting the bitter 9:23 6. Buy them after a frost 10:12 What this pot costs 11:20 7. Why greens turn gray 12:47 How that first Saturday ended 13:17 Your turn #collardgreens #southerncooking #appalachiancooking #oldfashionedcooking