Cooking Collard Greens With Bacon

The Collard Green is the traditional side dish of the American South cooked low and slow with garlic, onions and bacon until they're tender.

We love classic side dishes for southern favorites likeShrimp and Grits,Easy Pulled Pork and my personal favoriteShrimp Etouffee. Toss in an appetizer likeSouthern Fried Okra and it's a party!

COLLARD GREENS

Collard Greens can feel like an intimidating dish to a home cook since they're such a tough and fibrous green when you buy them at your grocery store. This doesn't mean you are in for a difficult cooking process. The hardest part about the recipe is waiting for the delicious end result.

When you're making this recipe one of the most important things to remember is to time your dishes properly. Short of making myCajun Roasted Turkey or BBQ Pulled Chickenthis recipe is going to take longer than the rest of your meal.

Of course, if you really want to make a statement at your next family dinner, cook Collard Greens with mashed potatoes and a whole smoked turkey! Anything is possible with this leafy green, so let's begin by going over some of the basics.

HOW TO MAKE COLLARD GREENS

Cook the bacon on medium heat until it begins to crisp up. Once it does, remove it from the skillet and chop into bite-sized pieces.
Add olive oil and onion, frying it for 5-7 minutes, stirring frequently, until softened. Afterwards add the garlic and cook an additional 30 seconds before adding in the collard greens.
After you stir the greens together with the onions and garlic, add in the chicken broth, brown sugar, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Stir well, reduce heat to low and simmer for 90 minutes until the collard greens are tender.

WHY SOUTHERN COLLARD GREENS ARE THE BEST COLLARD GREENS

Any denizen of the South would tell you that if you're simply steaming these leafy greens plain, then you're doing it wrong. This recipe is actually part of a New Year's Day tradition (enjoy it with a traditionalUltimate Garlic Pork Loin Roast!) where eating collard greens for the first time in the new year is supposed to give you good luck for the 364 days ahead.

All you really need to do to make Collard Greens more than just a glorified bowl of steamed spinach is to add onion, bacon, and a little bit of brown sugar to tie everything together. You can alter some of the flavor notes to this dish by using apple cider vinegar, or you could throw in some black-eyed peas to complete the dish with a legume-based protein!

More Southern Recipes to Enjoy!

Cornbread (or Southern White Cornbread): A southern meal is not complete without cornbread!
Southern Baked Beans: These have won numerous awards at large bbq contests!
Southern Fried Apples: An easy dessert served with Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream.

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ANSWERS TO SOME COMMON QUESTIONS ABOUT COLLARD GREENS

Are They Poisonous?

They are not. People are justified in asking this question, seeing as how some of the lesser common leafy greens are known to have poisonous qualities. That said, no single study has conclusively proven that Collard Greens are dangerous to consume, either cooked of raw.

HOW CAN I OBTAIN THE MOST HEALTH BENEFITS FROM COLLARD GREENS?

Sometimes, it's best to eat vegetables raw instead of cooked. In this case, the opposite is true.

Cooking Collard Greens to the point where they wilt makes them much easier to digest. Better digestion leads to better absorption of essential vitamins and minerals, so even if you sacrifice a small amount of nutrients cooking everything down, your body makes better use of what's still there!

But nobody ever said you can't eat Collard Greens raw, so if you want a wide variety of greens in your salad next time, go for it! I recommend cutting the collard greens thinly to make them easier to chew through.

HOW CAN I TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THESE GREENS AND OTHER VARIETIES?

Collard Greens are quite similar to other fibrous greens, like spinach, Swiss chard, and kale. Kale tends to have greater amount of nutrients within it per serving, but collard greens may be a better option if you have health restrictions on how much you can absorb – vitamin K being a perfect example.

Spinach tells the same story, in that it has more nutrient content per serving, but spinach has less fiber. It shouldn't surprise you that Swiss chard is also similar to both kale and spinach, but Swiss chard has considerably more sodium in it per serving, so collard greens will be your best bet if you're looking to cut back on your salt intake.

Whatever you decide to do is entirely up to you. This recipe we have for you below keeps things simple – that way you have the power to use it as a side if you have a much bigger meal in mind.

Collard Greens

▢ 8 slices bacon
▢ 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
▢ 1 yellow onion , chopped
▢ 2 garlic cloves , minced
▢ 1 pound collard greens , cut into 2" chunks
▢ 4 cups chicken broth
▢ 2 tablespoons brown sugar
▢ 1 teaspoon kosher salt
▢ 1 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper

Add the bacon to your dutch oven on medium heat and cook it until crisp and the fat has rendered before removing it from your pan and chopping.
Remove half the bacon fat, add in the vegetable oil, onions, and garlic on low heat, cooking for 5-7 minutes, stirring frequently, until softened.
Add the collard greens to the pan, stirring them well to coat them in the oil and onion mixture.
Add the chicken broth, brown sugar, salt and pepper to the dutch oven, stir well and cover.
Reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 90 minutes until the collard greens are tender to chew when tasted
Add the bacon back into the dutch oven and stir through.

Collard Green

Sabrina is a professionally trained Private Chef of over 10 years with ServSafe Manager certification in food safety. She creates all the recipes here on Dinner, then Dessert, fueled in no small part by her love for bacon.

Sabrina Snyder is a professionally trained personal and private chef of over 10 years who is the creator and developer of all the recipes on Dinner, then Dessert.

She is also the author of the upcoming cookbook: Dinner, then Dessert – Satisfying Meals Using Only 3, 5 or 7 Ingredients which is being published by Harper Collins.

She started Dinner, then Dessert as a business in her office as a lunch service for her coworkers who admired her lunches before going to culinary school and becoming a full time personal chef and private chef.

As a personal chef Sabrina would cook for families one day a week and cook their entire week of dinners. All grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning was done along with instructions on reheating. As a private chef she cooked for private parties and cooked in family homes in the evenings for families on a nightly basis after working as a personal chef during the day.

Sabrina has been certified as a ServSafe Manager since 2007 and was a longstanding member of the USPCA Personal Chef Association including being on the board of the Washington DC Chapter of Chefs in the US Personal Chef Association when they won Chapter of the year.

As a member of the community of food website creators Sabrina Snyder has spoken at many conferences regarding her experiences as a food writer including the Indulge Food Conference, Everything Food Conference, Haven Food Conference and IACP Annual Food Professionals Conference.

Sabrina lives with her family in sunny California.

See more posts by Sabrina

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