I was for a hot second contemplating which piece of my collard recipe I'd share with you. Then I thought, "Oh, hell no!...No he didn't just try baiting me into giving up my potlikker recipe !!??!! Who does he think just fell off the turnip truck?" What I will share, however, is that my favorite way to eat greens is with my homemade pepper relish, course grated black pepper and vinegar -- I like really old balsamic best, but regular yellow vinegar is great too.
That's also something else that was always in the fridge. If I saw less than a quart of potlikker, depending on the time of day I noticed, if greens weren't already in the making, I could be sure they would definitely be part of the next day's lunch -- because I wanted them instead of lettuce on my lunch sandwich -- and dinner because Mom and Dad wanted greens too. That stuff is as much a reason for having greens as are the greens. I mean, really. What the hell isn't really good with potlikker? I haven't tried but, but I suspect it'd make poached eggs better. I've used it to make omelettes; it worked for that.
That reminds me of a time back in the early '70s when Mom decided to have a fondue dinner party. She had all sorts of "traditionally Swiss"dipping sauces, but she also had potlikker in one of the bowls. People asked what it was and when Mom told them it was potlikker, they thought it was some sort of Swiss thing and nobody told them it wasn't. But they sure loved everything dipped in potlikker either before or after they'd dipped in something else, even the chocolate.
Eating collard greens, turnip greens and such was always associated with poor peoples food in my family, and I had enough of it.
There must be an art to making that crap taste good but my Mom didnt know how to do it; IT WAS AWFUL! Oh my Gawd, I preferred to eat spinach to that greens crap, bleh, spit hack spit hack spit.
There are times I recall with fondness about growing up poor in Texas, but EATING GREENS SURE AS HELL ISNT ONE OF THEM!
eeewwww, spit hack spit hack spit
Eating collard greens, turnip greens and such was always associated with poor peoples food in my family,
De gustibus non disputandum est.
What is there to say? Different families have different traditions. That is what it is. Ours is to some days eat high on the hog and others not so much. No matter anything else, all food is associated pretty much exclusively with one thing that makes everything else irrelevant: how it tastes.
A lot of that had to do with when certain food items were in season. For instance, ham would be complemented with peaches in the summer and apples in the fall. When the Silver Queen corn was ready, it would show up in at least one meal a day. I remember plenty of times taking a day trip somewhere and stopping at a roadside stand to buy corn and other local produce. We kids sit in the back and shuck the corn. Partly, so it was ready to be cooked by the time we got home, but equally as important to eat an ear on the way.
The other part of taste was how it was prepared. When "northern" company company came over, unfamiliar food items suddenly had French names. Fried and candied pig ears got described with word like
glacees,
orielles,
confit and
cochon. How do you make it? You slice pig ears into lardons and deep fry them 'til they are crispy. After the oil's drained and blotted away, you coat them with syrup, and then dredge them in spiced/herbed granulated white salt and sugar. What herbs and spice? That depends on what herbs and spices you like and which ones are in the cupboard when you make the spiced sugar. This is one thing for which dried and powdered herbs are better for this dish than are freshly minced.
Stuff like that, well cooked greens, beef short ribs, and tons of other stuff tastes so good it's stupid to not eat it, let alone not do because poor people do too. That amounts to saying, "We're too well off to eat food that tastes good." Normally, I'd follow that statement by asking, "Who the hell does that?" But in this instance, I guess I know: you and your family do. I s'pose there are other folk who do too.
There must be an art to making that crap taste good
There is.
You have to slow-simmer them for at least three hours.
- You have to put some sort of meat in the pot; pork is best, but smoked turkey works too. If you have bacon grease around, you can dump a whole bunch of it in the pot if you don't actually have fatback or a pound of smoked bacon.
- You have to put onion in the pot.
- You have to put something bitter-tart in the pot. You can use any number of things; most folks use vinegar. If you don't put it in the pot, then it'll have to be done at the table. The flavor profile is different depending on when you add the vinegar. Some people dump in sweet, dill pickle, or a host of other kinds of relish.[1]
- You need something sweet in the pot -- whatever color sugar you have, syrup, or maybe molasses, I don't know as I've never used molasses in greens.
- You need salt and pepper in the water.
- You can put cut up tomatoes and put them in there.
- You can put firm fruits in there if you want, but peal and core/pit them if you do. Most folks who add fruits go with apples, but I've tasted peaches, plums, cherries, blackberries, and pears too. If I were going to go with fruits softer than apples and pears, I wouldn't put 'em in before the last 15 minutes of cooking. One can, I just wouldn't because I would want the fruit to still be obviously there. When I've make greens with most berry fruits, I just add them in and toss them after cooking the greens and before putting them in serving dish. Other times I just slice 'em and toss them on top of the greens in the serving dish. Anyway, you figure out what you want to do with fruits.
- You can put spices in there. What spices do you like? Those are ones to put in.
Now don't ask how much of anything to put in the pot because the answer for each ingredient is "some." One has to go through a process of trial and error to know how much is "some." I will tell you this:
- Heavily salt your water at the very start and then taste the greens about an hour after you put the lid on the pot and the cooking actually started. If you can taste salt, you need to put more greens in the pot and if it tastes like the beginnings of good, you don't need more salt. If you don't know, sprinkle in half a teaspoon of salt, stir and then taste. If you feel like you want more salt, add a quarter teaspoon, stir and taste. You can continue that process down to 1/8th of teaspoon. You should probably give it some time if go that far.
- Go easy on the spices if you opt to put them in. They and salt are the two things that can most easily turn greens into a mess that only worms, flies and maggots will eat. With spice, especially, you have to be okay with using a little bit more next time, or maybe adding some more to the pot when you reheat the leftovers. (Greens you didn't eat, should be stored in the potlikker and kept cold. Put the whole pot in the fridge, or in the shed, garage or root cellar if it's winter time.)
Also, slow cooking for a long time is essential. Don't think you are going to have good green after just an hour or two. I can tell you now, you won't, although you might have something that tastes better than you are used to. (The time can be reduced if you know what you're doing with a pressure cooker.) Also, when you go to a restaurant that offers greens, you should ask to taste the greens before you order a serving of them, because good greens is something of an art.
Now you put together a pot of greens using your take on the suggestions above -- there're enough ingredient ideas there for you to make good greens ranging from "basic" greens or "gucci" greens -- and see if you don't like 'em.
Note:
- One time I was making greens in college. My Korean housemate had tried my greens before, but that time he asked me if I'd mind putting some of his momma's kimchi in the pot. It took me a minute, but I said okay. We put in something between 1/8th and 1/4 cup of kimchi into a eight quart pot of greens. It was completely different from anything I understood greens as tasting like, but it was damn good.
I relented because up to that point, he'd been wanting me to try kimchi, and in that moment, he and I both knew I had run out of ways to demur on the kimchi. It's spicy fermented/pickled cabbage, and I was about to dump pickle relish in my greens. I couldn't very well say no without losing his respect and a piece of his friendship. Cabbage and greens weren't worth doing that.
I did kimchi greens a second time so he could be sure that I did truly like it. I haven't had it or thought about it since then, but only because it doesn't occur to me to call Greg and ask if he's got some of his momma's kimchi around, and I'm not close enough to any other Koreans that I'd have access to other homemade kimchi. (Greens are the only thing for which I have used kimchi, but I suspect it'd be quite nice to use it to season a pork roast.)
