Charred Greens (Turnip)
CSA boxes will soon be filled with endless greens that often end with moans of “I don’t know what to do with all these greens”. Greens are versatile and should be embraced! Each type of green, mustard, collard, turnip, kale, chard, spinach, etc, does have a different texture and flavor but not different enough that it will hurt substitutions during cooking.
Charred greens are fast, fun and comforting. In their most basic form, you can serve them on the side of a protein or put the protein on top of the greens. For breakfast you can put them in an omelette, breakfast sandwich, in a quiche, or over grits with a runny egg on top (add crumbled bacon on top for a crunch). Add greens to a panini or on top of pizza. For a snack, mix them with garlic, sour cream, cream cheese, and hot sauce then puree it as a dip. Let your imagination be the limit, but please remember the lemon!
Ingredients
10 ounce turnip greens
2 tbl olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tbl ground black pepper
1/2 tsp minced garlic
1/2 lemon
Directions
Wash the greens well. Fill the sink with cold water and allow the greens (if the greens are tied together, let them be loose) to hang out for 5-10 minutes. Drain the water and give them a quick rinse. The rinse will get the remaining dirt off of the leaves. Pat dry. Remove the stems and tear the large leaves to bite-size pieces.
Heat the olive oil in a saute pan on medium heat until it glistens (the oil will be shinier and spreads out). Put a leaf in the bottom of the pan, if you hear sizzling, continue on. If not, allow the pan to get hotter. Add 1/3 of the greens followed by evenly sprinkling 1/3 of the salt and pepper. Repeat two more times. Add the garlic on top of the greens. It is important to layer the seasonings because your won’t be able to distribute the salt and pepper evenly after it’s cooked.
After the top layer is wilted and you smell the charring (think roasted Brussels sprouts) take a spatula and flip a small corner of the greens. If it’s brown, flip all of the greens. If not, hang on a few more seconds until it’s brown. After, it’s flipped, continue cooking about 30-60 seconds and remove it from the heat. Squeeze lemon over the greens right before serving.
Notes
The flavor of dark sesame oil compliments the flavors of the greens really well. If you have some of the oil, give it a try and sprinkle sesame seeds on top of the cooked greens.
