"Southern, cooked-to-mush collards" I'm not familiar with this recipe. I've always used the rule of thumb from my grandmother--cook until tender.

I watched a cooking challenge on the Food Network a week or so ago and one of the chefs cut the greens into a chiffonade and sauteed them quickly in a bit of oil with lots of garlic. They looked really good and the judges were impressed. I'm going to try that one, too.

Mustangs, I'm not even from the south and I'm intimately familiar with those "cooked to mush" collards, LOL. That's how my Grandma cooked them and she was from Ohio! Hours and hours on the stove with a pork hock.....

Of course, Elery swears my Grandmother had family in Tennessee, LOL, he says she sounds just like his Grandma.

And I cook my collards a bit longer than 10 minutes but certainly not the 3 or 4 hours Grandma cooked them.

Annie

Mustangs, we've had collards in several restaurants here in TX and they were way overcooked and mushy. I checked Paula Dean's recipe, she cooks them for an hour. I googled several other recipes which require even longer cooking, some of them for 1.5 - 2 hours. I finally decided to search this forum, which I should have done in the first place. And thankfully, I found Lars's recipe. :o)

I can eat collards that have been steamed , boiled for 15 minutes or any length of time. I grew up eating the cooked to death collards because my grandmother and mother both cooked them that way. I also cook them that way because I happen to like the pot liqueur(cooking liquid) to soak up with hot crackling cornbread.

I stand corrected. While my family is 7th generation Floridian, I guess I have managed to dodge "Southern" mushy greens.

Mustangs, sounds like you lucked out and come from a family of good cooks. :o)

Funny, I kind of like them "mushy". And Dad always had his drizzled with vinegar.

Annie

I've been cooking collard greens more often now as well. I don't mind them mushy, but I much prefer them cooked only briefly. I've been discarding the stems, however. They don't need vinegar when they are cooked only briefly.

Glad you found my post - I like CGs much more now myself as well!

Lars

I discarded the stems too, the bottom ones were pretty tough and would have probably needed loooooooong cooking. I've been getting more adventurous with greens, even made Kale the other day. I sauteed it with garlic and a little bit of chicken broth, it was very good. I am planning to try mustard greens next.

Lars, ever since you introduced us to Cafe Brasil (Brazilian food) and I took DH there after a Surfas run - we do our collards Brazilian style (shut up everyone who knows the beauty biz meaning to a 'Brazilian'), pretty much as Donna details above. I'll sometimes add a splash of orange vinegar at the end.

"Mustangs, sounds like you lucked out and come from a family of good cooks. :o)"

Petra I am sure you are just kidding or so I hope. I come from a long line of VA farmers and they did cook them this way and I can guarantee you that my great-grandmother, grandmother and mother were all very good cooks.

You may not prefer them cooked this way which is fine but because of that does not make a person a bad cook.:)

Dixie, of course I was kidding!! That's why I put the smiley face on the end. My mother was an excellent cook by most standards, but she always boiled vegetables into oblivion. Hubby's mother too, that's why we both prefer lightly steamed/cooked veggies.

LOL reminds me of one summer going to my girlfriend's friends' house for a bbq. Before the grill was even lit the husband was chewing out his wife because the corn on the cob wasn't boiling yet. All I could think of was 1) what a jerk to yell at her like that, esp in front of company, and 2) thank goodness that corn wasn't cooking yet!

I guess some people like some veggies killed twice, once when harvested and once when cooked. Doesn't make it wrong, I suppose!

Thank you Dixie; it sounded more like a regional slam--which I am use to.

My goodness, I was NOT trying to slam any region!! I merely wrote that I don't like the overcooked greens we've been served in restaurants here in TX!! Looking at other greens recipes from the South, Southern greens are apparently cooked for a long time, whether in TX or Georgia or wherever, as evidenced by greens recipes from different regions. That is why I called them "traditional Southern". I'll see if I can get this post pulled and will refrain from posting from now on.

Petra, pulling and not posting again certainly isn't necessary and kudos to Lars' more sophisticate recipe doesn't need to be side tracked by me.

Petra, I agree with Mustangs as I don't know why you want this pulled or that you want to stop posting. I saw your smiley and I did one too at the end. You did state just Southern states (even after Mustangs and I posted) and believe me people cook this way all over the US and beyond and like it. You just prefer them a different way which is fine but there is nothing wrong with a person that wants to cook them to "mush" as you call it either. My MIL was born and raised in Pekin, IL and cooks them that way. She is far from the South.

Some people have very warm memories of the days of eating that food that their grandmother cooked in the country. Maybe not for you but for others, yes. Those people are gone out of our lives and it's a way to "feel" like they are with us again.

Plus, there is nothing wrong with Southern Cooking IMO. I don't cook like that everyday. I think a lot of people watch Paula on TV and think that we eat that way morning, noon and night and that is just not true.

Certainly no reason to pull this thread! I'm from Texas and the South also, and I saw no offense here. I grew up on Southern food because that's what the maid cooked when I was a small child, but I don't think she overcooked the greens. We mostly had turnip greens, however, along with the turnips, which I liked as a child as well. My father gave the maid a patch of land for growing vegetables, and she grew turnips, potatoes, okra (which I still love as much as when I was a child), beans, peas, onions, etc. I used to help harvest some of the vegetables, and I especially liked the potatoes because I never knew what I was going to find when I dug them up - it was like treasure hunting. The maid also cooked for us - mostly soul food, I think, which is what DF was used to. I was sad when she moved away. My mother grew up on German food, since her mother was from Alsace.

Lars