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This is my go-to collard greens recipe. These easy collard greens have a richness about them and a melt-in-your-mouth quality. Vegan & gluten-free side dish.
Garlicky collard greens are one of my all-time favorite foods. While they weren’t something that I grew up eating, I have more than made up for lost time since then.
Easy collard greens
Slow-cooked collard greens are tender and melt in your mouth.
And they make a great side dish along with vegan mac and cheese. If I make that for dinner, I can rest assured I will be very popular in my house that night.
Are collard greens bitter?
One question I’m often asked about collard greens is if they are bitter.
If you’re used to milder greens like romaine or spinach, collards may seem bitter at first. They have a much stronger, grassier flavor.
That’s one benefit of cooking the collard greens low and slow. They lose a lot of their bitterness. And the flavor becomes richer with an almost tinny quality.
I cook my collards for about a half an hour with lots of sautéed garlic. But some people cook theirs for hours!
You can also add something sweet like dried cranberries to balance some of that bitterness, as I did in my recipe for smoky sweet vegan collard greens.
After a while, you will become accustomed to the strong flavors of dark, leafy greens. You may notice that your palate changes.
Who knows? With a little time you may be making collard leaf raw tacos!
How to cook collard greens
Start by getting out a big soup pot.
The collards will shrink a lot. But when you start, you will have a pretty big pile.
Put a bit of oil in the bottom of the pot. Sauté minced garlic until softened and fragrant.
Add the chopped collard greens to the pot, along with vegetable broth or water + a pinch of a vegetable bouillon cube.
The size of a bunch of greens varies. You don’t want the collards to be boiling in the broth or water.
So add as much as seems appropriate to keep the greens from burning. Then add more if the liquid is cooking off too quickly.
Once the liquid is at a simmer, turn the heat to low and cover with a lid. Allow the greens to cook for 25 minutes. You want them to be almost falling apart soft.
Greens are one of those rare foods that is actually better when it’s overcooked. So don’t be afraid to start the collards first before getting the rest of dinner going. It will only be improved by it.
(Just make sure they don’t run out of liquid and burn.)
Make it your own
Add curly kale to the mix.
You can make collard greens your own by adding an equal amount of kale to your collard greens.
When you’re putting the collard greens into the soup pot, add an equal amount of kale. Then double the rest of the ingredients.
If collards taste bitter to you, kale makes the dish a little milder. (My husband always prefers collards with an equal amount of kale.)
Plus, both greens cook down a lot. So you’re more likely to get some leftovers out of it if you double up!
Add a splash of liquid smoke.
Often, people will add smoked pig parts to greens. But why not leave the pigs out of it?
The only reason that product tastes smoky is because it has been cooked in a smoker. You can just as easily use liquid smoke instead.
As the name suggests, liquid smoke is simply smoke that has been condensed into a liquid. If you’d like specific amounts, check out this recipe for smoky sweet vegan collard greens.
Serve these vegan collard greens with main dishes like:
- Vegan BBQ Soy Curls
- Vegan polenta stacks with squash & cashew cream
- Buffalo Soy Curls sandwich
- Vegan BBQ sandwich
Collards pair well with side dishes like:
- The best vegan potato salad
- Vegan coleslaw
- Red wine mushrooms
- Vegan fried green tomatoes
- Buffalo corn on the cob
- Roasted delicata squash with rosemary
Easy collard greens (Vegan)
Ingredients
- 1 teaspoon organic canola oil or other neutral flavored oil
- 4 to 5 cloves garlic minced
- 1 bunch collard greens leaves removed from tough center rib and roughly chopped in medium-sized pieces
- ½ cup vegetable broth Or 1/2 cup water + ¼ of a vegan vegetable bouillon cube
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- In a medium-sized pot or skillet with lid, bring oil to a medium heat. Add the garlic and sauté until fragrant, about five minutes.
- Add the chopped collard greens and vegetable broth (or water plus bouillon cube section). Add a pinch of salt, keeping in mind that your broth or bouillon cube may already have salt in it. Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally.
- Once it is simmering, turn the heat to medium low and cover. Remove lid to stir and check occasionally, making sure there is still enough liquid on the bottom and that the collards aren’t sticking. If they start to stick, lower the heat and add a tablespoon or two of water, as necessary.
- Cover and continue cooking for 25 minutes, until the collard greens have become soft to the bite.
Nutrition
Originally posted July 2013. Content, photos, and recipe updated May 2019.
Mae says
Hi Cadry! I bought a bunch of collard greens for the first time yesterday to use in pesto, and I have a whole lot of it left, so I was trying to think of what to do with it, when I randomly stumbled on this post! My silly question for you is how big is a “bunch” to you? I couldn’t believe how huge the leaves are, and I have quite a bit of it left. It seems like the amount that is pictured in the pot that you have in this post is not as much as I have left. Do you have any sort of estimated guess on how many really big leaves you’d call a bunch? Thanks!
Cadry says
Hi, Mae! When I say “a bunch,” I’m referring to the way that the collard greens are bundled together at the grocery store. One bundle is one bunch. The amount of actual greens that you get from a bunch, though, can vary it seems, depending on how big of leaves you have. I just counted the amount of leaves in the bunch currently in my refrigerator, and there are eight very large leaves.
This recipe is really forgiving. Just get rid of the center rib of the collards, chop the leaves, and sauté whatever amount of garlic you’d like in oil in a pot. Then add the leaves and enough broth (or water & bouillon cube) to cover the bottom of the pot, but not so much that it completely covers the greens themselves. (You want to kind of steam the greens, not boil them.) Follow the directions as directed above, and if the greens start to stick, add more water.
Good luck! 🙂
Tracey says
How do you make your plantains??
Cadry says
I just so happen to have a post about that! 🙂 How to make plantains: http://cadryskitchen.com/2014/11/15/make-sweet-fried-plantains/
Tracey says
You are amazing!!!
Cadry says
Ha! Aren’t you sweet? 😀
Tracey says
🙂
Tomas says
Googling around for new recipies im new going vegan and always seem to go hungry all the time.. 🙁
I used to be a very big meat eater so its so hard to chug in like 2 entire plates of food just to not go hungry. I grow tired of eating when theres so much chewing involved.
Now im on my 4th 100% vegan week.
Relapsed into going back to meat multiple times when im just TOO hungry because im running out of ideas on what to eat.
And i dont have many “staple foods”
which i can make over and over and know how to vary them without growing tired of them.
I always like kale and cooking kale with a lid on + water on a frying pan but sometimes i just keep failing and fry them and dry them out instead.
I hope this recipe (low heat and with oil and increasing the cooking time to 25 minutes where as i usually did it in 10-15mins on high heat with water)
please share any more recipies which for you are “staple”
and has many variations, thank you very much 🙂
/ Struggling swedish vegan
Cadry says
Hi, Tomas!
I’m sorry to hear that you’re struggling with going vegan. It can be an adjustment at first to get used to cooking new things, especially after building up a lifetime of habits. I totally hear you on getting tired of chewing. I remember feeling that way too when I went vegetarian. It was a lot more produce than I was used to eating!
The first thing I always recommend to people who are just going vegan is to look at the foods you used to make & love before you went vegan. Is there a way to veganize those things, so that you’re not making a new recipe every time? For me, it was easy to swap out beef for beans in tacos, lentils for meat in spaghetti, and tofu for meat in a stir-fry.
Here are some other links that may help. Here are 40 recipes for new vegans. And here are 40 vegan resources that were written with new vegans in mind.
Good luck to you, and please keep in touch!
Valerie says
I really like collard greens, but they aren’t seen much up here in Canada. I bought a bunch a number of years ago that had a recipe attached and it sounded a lot like this recipe, but it had potatoes in it and a lot of garlic, too. I don’t know what I did with the recipe. Are you familiar with this way of preparing collard greens?
Cadry says
I’m not familiar with that specific recipe, unfortunately. But collard greens, like kale & cabbage, are really nice with potatoes. I like to brown a seitan sausage with the collards & put them over mashed potatoes. Very cozy!