This is about as simple as it gets; we’re just letting the natural goodness of the collards shine through here. The following recipe is adapted from a Mark Bittman recipe in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. The same approach would work just as well for kale, bok choy, or swiss chard … and you could try this for spinach, arugula, or tat soi as well.
A note about stems: When I’ve eaten our collards, I have not found it necessary to separate the stems from the leaves. The stems have been tender and perfectly pleasant raw. If you tried this recipe with kale, chard, or bok choy, however, you would want to begin steaming the stems by themselves and add the leaves once the stems began to tenderize.
Without further ado:
Ingredients
Preparation
1) Wash your collard leaves and chop them into roughly one-inch-wide strips.
2) Toss the chopped leaves into your steamer basket or whatever you use for steaming.
3) Let the collards steam until the leaves are bright green and tender. This should take no more than 10 minutes, but if you have a large heap of greens in your steamer, you may have to toss it once or twice to make sure it steams evenly.
4) Put the collards in your serving dish and toss them with the butter, lemon juice, and salt.
5) Eat!
