Did you eat your New Year's Day collards? I hope so, because according to Southern lore, eating greens in the form of collards on New Year's Day brings you greens in the form of money in the rest of the year. Eating black eyed or field peas is supposed to bring you coins, so a healthy serving of both is ideal. Collards are often seasoned with pork fat, but I've got a lighter, vegetarian option for you today in the form of brown butter collards.
Collards can and should be eaten on more than New Year's Day though, because they are chock full of vitamin K, A, and C, plus manganese, calcium, and B6. They are less bitter and more nutritious after the first frost of the year, making them ideal to eat in the winter instead of warmer months.
Meatless Southern collards
I settled on this recipe on New Year's Eve day, when I pulled out several Southern cookbooks to see what kind of collard recipes were contained within. One of my favorite cooking books, but not a cookbook, is the Flavor Bible. It lists complementary pairings for every type of ingredient you can think of, and for collards, one of those flavors is brown butter. Cha ching, there's the fat replacement for pork!
To me, pork fat on collards is slimy and smells bad. Most people think the collards themselves smell terrible, but NAY. It is in fact, the pork fat combined with collards and boiling water that produces the smell. Trust me, I stuck my face deep into the collard pot to see if I could get a whiff of the collard stink and got nothing more than a light, hot vegetal smell, which wasn't bad and didn't linger.
Brown Butter Collards
Equipment
- Large stock pot
Ingredients
- 14 big collard leaves (or ~12 cups of shredded fresh collard greens)
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
- ½ large yellow onion diced
- 4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
- 4 cups water (or enough water to just cover greens)
- 4 teaspoons smoked salt
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- black pepper to taste
Instructions
- If your collards are still whole, use scissors to remove the tough middle stem. Cut remaining pieces into small, bite sized ribbons. Wash in a large colander to remove any sand, etc. Shake to dry as best you can and set aside.
- Put the butter in a large stock pot over medium heat. Stir occasionally over the next 5-7 minutes as the butter begins to brown. DO NOT walk away here. Once the butter begins to form brown specks, add in the onions.
- Stir to coat the onions and let cook another 5 minutes. Stir occasionally to keep the butter from burning. Add in the collards and stir to coat. Cook for an additional 1 minute.
- Pour in the stock, then the water. Only add as much water as is needed to just cover the top of the greens. Add 3 teaspoons of the smoked salt, and some black pepper.
- Bring to a boil, then simmer on low for 45 minutes, uncovered. Stir occasionally. You can walk away from the stove at this point.
- After 45 minutes, taste for texture. Cook longer if they are too tough for your liking.
- Once done, remove from heat, add apple cider vinegar, plus more salt and pepper to taste.
- Serve immediately.
On not liking collards
So here's the real deal. I did not like collards until really very extremely recently. And even then, I don't want just any collards, I want very specific ones, mostly made my way. But what changed my tune is the — moment of silence here — buffet. Yes, the Thanksgiving country buffet three years ago got me to give their collards and try and to everyone's surprise, I went back for seconds. This is why, with new safety protocols now that we all realize how disgusting our fellow humans really are, I am a huge proponent of buffets making their way back into our hearts and our stomachs.
I don't know what was done to those buffet collards to make me like them so much. There's a 100% chance they were seasoned with pork but whatever else they did, including cooking them properly to the exact point between not tough and not slimy, was perfect.
Other collard pairings
What else pairs with collards according to the Flavor Bible? Well, some favorites I'll be trying soon include Parmesan cheese, oregano, and tomatoes. Preferred collard cookin' techniques include boiling, braising, steaming, and stir frying.
Will you be trying some collards this winter? If you need some convincing, here's a review from one of Patrick's friends when I posted the recipe on Facebook: "April, the greens were good! Served them with a little hot sauce on top, definitely an improvement." And Patrick's review, the most important one to me? "y'all. . . april made some collards y'all. . . y'all that pot likker is fire as fuck. ."
Three yalls sounds like a winner to me! Happy New Year and Happy Vitamin K Ingestion Extravaganza to you!
Find more New Year's recipes
