Collards are the one thing on the Southern table that get better when it gets colder. A hard frost turns the starch in the leaves to sugar, which is why the bunches at the market this week taste sweet and the ones you bought in August tasted like a lawn.
This is the slow version, the one that sits on the back of the stove for an hour and fills the house. Smoked pork goes in first, then onion, then Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em, which is doing more work here than it looks like. The organic brown sugar takes the edge off the bitterness, the mustard seed and cayenne give the pot its heat, and the paprika, garlic and onion are what make the pot likker taste like something instead of like water.
There is no salt in the ingredient list, and that is on purpose. The bacon is salty, the broth is salty, and the rub is built on sea salt. Put more in at the start and you will be sorry at the end.
Make them the day before Thanksgiving or Christmas if you can. Greens are better on the second day, and it is one less pot fighting for the stove on the morning that counts.
Southern Collard Greens with Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em
Collard greens cooked down slow with smoked bacon, onion and an organic BBQ rub, finished with cider vinegar off the heat. Serves eight, and the pot likker goes in the bowl.
Ingredients
For the pot
- 3 lb collard greens (about 2 large bunches)
- 6 oz thick-cut smoked bacon, cut crosswise into ½-inch pieces (or a 1 lb smoked ham hock, or 2 smoked turkey wings — see Chef's notes)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil, only if your bacon is lean
- 1 large yellow onion, halved and sliced thin
- 4 cloves garlic, sliced
- 2 tablespoons Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em seasoning, divided
- 6 cups low-sodium chicken broth, or water
- 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
On the table
- Hot pepper vinegar
- More cider vinegar
- Cornbread
- The pot likker, in the bowl — not optional
Instructions
- Wash the greens like you mean it. Fill a clean sink with cold water, push the leaves under, swish them hard, then lift the leaves OUT with your hands rather than pouring the water off. Drain the sink, look at the sand in the bottom, and do it twice more. Collards grow in sandy Carolina dirt, and grit at the bottom of the pot cannot be fixed later.
- Strip the stems. Fold each leaf in half along the thick rib and pull the rib away, or lay it flat and cut down either side of it. Stack six or eight de-stemmed leaves, roll the stack into a fat cigar, and slice crosswise into ribbons about ½ inch wide.
- Put the bacon in a large Dutch oven over medium heat and let it render 8 to 10 minutes, until the fat has come out and the edges have browned. Leave every bit of that fat in the pot.
- Add the onion to the fat and cook 6 to 8 minutes, stirring now and then, until it is soft and starting to go gold at the edges. Add the garlic and cook one minute more, just until you can smell it.
- Add 1 tablespoon of the seasoning and stir it through the hot fat for 30 to 45 seconds, until it smells toasted. This is the step most people skip. A dry rub bloomed in fat tastes like a different ingredient from the same rub stirred into liquid at the end.
- Pour in the broth and scrape the brown stuff off the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon. Bring it up to a simmer. (If you are using a ham hock or smoked turkey wings instead of bacon, put them in now and let them simmer, covered, for 45 minutes before the greens go anywhere near the pot.)
- Add the greens by the handful, pressing each batch down with tongs until it collapses and makes room for the next. The pot will look impossibly full for about four minutes, and then it will not.
- Put the lid on and bring the heat down to the barest simmer. Young fall collards are tender in about 45 minutes; big tough leaves can take an hour and a half. Start biting a ribbon at 45 minutes and keep going until it gives completely with no squeak.
- Take the pot off the heat. Stir in the cider vinegar and the remaining 1 tablespoon of seasoning, wait two minutes, then taste. The vinegar goes in at the end and never at the start — acid added early sets the leaves and they stay tough no matter how long you cook them.
- Serve the greens in bowls with a good ladle of the pot likker over them, cornbread on the side, and the hot pepper vinegar on the table so everybody can fix their own.
Why there is no salt in the list. Three salty things are already going in: the bacon, the broth and the rub, which is built on sea salt. Salt the pot at the start and by the time the liquid has reduced for an hour you will have something nobody can eat. Taste at step nine, after the vinegar, and decide then.
How much this makes. Three pounds of raw collards is an alarming amount of leaf and it cooks down to about eight generous side servings. If you are feeding a holiday table where greens are one of six things, it stretches to twelve.
What is in season right now. Collards are at their best from the first frost through February, and the cold is what makes them sweet rather than bitter — the plant converts starch to sugar to protect itself, and you get the benefit. Yellow onions and garlic out of the fall harvest are good keepers all winter. Turnips are in too, and a couple of peeled, diced turnips dropped in with the greens is traditional and very good.
The pot likker is not waste. The liquid left in the pot is the whole point of cooking greens this way, and pouring it down the sink is the single most common mistake. Ladle it into the bowl with the greens and give people cornbread to put in it.
Ahead of time, and the second day. These are better reheated. Make them a day or two ahead, cool them in their liquid and keep them covered in the refrigerator; warm them back up slowly on the stove with a splash of water. They freeze well for three months in their likker. This is the dish to get out of the way on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
Other greens, shorter times. The same pot works for turnip greens, mustard greens or kale. Turnip and mustard greens are sharper and are done in 30 to 40 minutes; kale is milder and wants about 30. Collards are the only one of the four that genuinely rewards the full hour.
On the label. Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em is USDA Certified Organic, gluten free and kosher, with no MSG, no fillers and no anti-caking agents — sea salt, organic brown sugar, garlic, paprika, onion, black pepper, mustard seed, cayenne, ginger and ancho chile, and nothing else. It comes in a 5 oz resealable pouch, which is deliberate: a blend built on garlic and brown sugar will cake in a glass jar without anti-caking chemicals, so we bag it and you break it up in the pouch. The bacon, the broth and the cornbread are not ours — read those labels yourself if gluten matters at your table.
More to cook from here. Greens want something smoked beside them: Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em Baby Back Ribs or Slow Cooker Pulled Pork. For the rest of the holiday table there is Anything With Wings Thanksgiving Turkey, The OG Mashed Potatoes and Candied Yams Sweet Potatoes. And on January 1st these go next to New Year's Black Eyed Peas, which is the whole reason to have leftovers.