Southern Style Collard Greens
A simple Southern country dish, high in fiber and nutrients, with a delicious pot liquor that begs for a side of cornbread.
Collard Greens are a leafy green member of the Brassica Oleracea family that include cabbage, broccoli and kale. They've been around since ancient Greece, adopted by the Romans and spread throughout the sub-Saharan African continent from there. Many reference materials I have read suggest that Collards found their way to the New World through slaves in the 17th Century, but I doubt many slaves en route to the Americas had seeds in their pocket. More likely, slave traders, being the mercenaries that they were, brought Collards to the colonies for profit. But for certain, the plant loved the weather and soil of the US South and quickly became a Southern food staple, simmered with ham hocks or fat back.
This recipe was introduced to me by a Food Network chef who made one pilot and was never seen again. I have made it many, many times. The original recipe calls for both fresh and smoked ham hocks and I can rarely find them both at the same time, if at all. You can substitute thick cut bacon or a diced up ham steak in a pinch.
As for collards, if you can find them pre-washed, chopped and prepared for cooking, it will save you some time. If you buy them in whole bunches, farm fresh, they very often are loaded with sand and require at least three soakings in cold water in your kitchen sink to properly clean them. This is the method I prefer, but don’t always have the time, so the prepared collards are sometimes welcomed.
An Alternative
For years, I resisted frozen greens of any sort. But frozen spinach this day and age convinced me that flash freezing technology is able to retain a fresh taste unlike technology of years past. I experimented with a number of recipes using fresh spinach along side frozen spinach, and there was no distinction between them. My Number One Fan came home with a bag of Pictsweet Farms Chopped Frozen Collard Greens and my experience with frozen spinach convinced me to gave it a shot. I did not prepare them according to the directions on the package, but instead adapted this recipe. They were surprisingly good and I have captured the modified recipe in the card below.
My default setting will always be farm fresh by the bundle for a final product that is worth the effort. But the adaptation of this recipe for frozen collard greens works as a good alternative in far less time.
Southern Style Collard Greens
Ingredients
- 3-4 smoked ham hocks
- 3-4 fresh ham hocks
- 1- 1/2 gallons water to cover
- 1 gallon ham hock stock
- 4 large bunches of collard greens chopped into 4-inch pieces
- 1 large onion peeled
- 1 jalapeno pepper, split in half lengthwise, seeds removed
- 1 26 oz carton chicken stock (like, Swanson's or Kitchen Basics)
- 1/2 tbsp black pepper
- 1/2 tbsp fine sea salt
- malt vinegar to taste
Instructions
- First off, if you can find both fresh and smoked ham hocks, use them. If you can only find one or the other, you should prefer the smoked ones. Place ham hocks in a stock pot large enough to hold the hocks, leaving 6 inches of free space at the top of the pot.
- Pour enough cold water over the hocks to cover by 3 inches. Bring to a rapid simmer over a medium high heat.
- A thick foam will build on the top of the stock. Carefully remove all of the foam. Reduce heat to low and simmer at least three hours, but you can go five or six hours if you wish.
- Constantly skim the clear fat that builds at the top of the stock.
- When the stock is done, you can take each hock out of the stock and cut out some of the innermost tender meat and set it aside. Don't use the outermost flesh of the hock as it is tough and chewy.
- Discard the hocks. Don't add the meat back to the stock until you start the greens. Be sure to reserve of the stock for the chops; the rest you will use for the collard green recipe.
