Collards are probably the main reason i even have a garden....We eat them several times a week... grandma used to steam them for 45+ minutes with salt pork, a ham bone or neck bones and fresh picked red hot peppers.... I do not eat pork so I usually slow cook mine as well but with smoked turkey parts, onions and a few dashes of crush red peppers. Though I can cook spinach in 3 minutes flat, I like my collards cooked long & slow with very little water. My ex-Mother-in-law tends to make her more of a soup with a lot of water... As a kid, one of my chores was to pick collards from the backyard garden and my grandma insisted all of the greens be picked before the leaves for to be too big.... Even, by chance, if we went to a local grocer to buy greens, it was nearly a sin to bring home greens with big leaves..... was said they get bitter and too tough to cook properly. I am not fond of kale at all...I have an older neighbor who grows a lot of kale to sell at local farmer's market. He notes that his black customers seem to prefer collards while his white customers prefer kale....I tend to think its a more of a Northern/Southern thing since I literally live a few miles from the Mason-Dixon line. my mother & grandma both like to mix Collards with Mustard or turnip greens... I'm not as fond of that but my kids seem to prefer a mix of all 3. Collards tend to get gritty ( sandy) so I usually soak them overnight in vinegar before even attempting to further clean and cook them....that soaking also helps cut any potential bitterness the greens may have.

denninmi, When you make the cabbage rolls out of collards, do you blanch the leaves at all? I know when I make golumpki (Polish cabbage rolls), I dip the cabbage head in a pot of boiling, salted water. Do you just use the raw collard leaves without blanching? Basically, as others have stated, collards are like non-heading cabbages. We love collards but eat them in the Southern fashion cooked with a smoked hock, a few dashes of tabasco, some onion and some garlic, and we eat them all year too. But, I'd be very interest to know if you blanch the collard leaves when making your rolls. thx, T

Like Ken, I freeze cabbage rolls before baking them. I steam the leaves so they are pliable, mix up the filling of rice, meat, etc. and roll them up. they go into bags in the freezer and I take out as many as I want, thaw them, add the sauce and bake them or put them in the crockpot. I've never frozen peppers stuffed but Dad would cut the top off the peppers, take out the seeds and core and freeze on baking sheets. After they were frozen he would "stack" them inside each other, then freeze in bags, 4 to a bag because that's how many he and stepmom made for a meal. When he wanted them he mixed up the filling, stuffed the still frozen peppers, then added sauce to the pan and baked them. If he let the pepeprs thaw before stuffing them, they got too soft to handle well, but they get soft during cooking so it didn't seem to make a difference after they were cooked. Annie

Sorry........old age syndrome ....... Cabbage Rolls Linda Subitz 1 Lb beef and pork mixture, Ground 2 Slice white bread into, Broken -small pieces 2 strips bacon cut in small -pieces 1 onion, Chopped chopped parley, thyme, salt -& pepper, To Taste 1 Tbl Lea and Perrin 2 Cups beef broth 2 Tbl demiglace if you have it -(if not use beef consomm� instead of beef broth) 1/4 Cup water Head of cabbage Fry bacon pieces until they have rendered their fat but are not crisp. Add chopped onion and saute until limp. Combine bread pices with ground meat and add onion bacon mixture. Add herbs and spices and steak sauce if using. Combine well. Prepare sauce by combining beef broth, demi glace and water in a small sauce pan. Heat to blend. Prepare cabbage and stuff . Place the rolls in a roasting pan and cover with the beef broth and demi glace mix. Bake covered, at 350 for 1 to 1 1/2 hours.