Collard greens...oh, YESSSSSS!

[Trueblue Texan]

I just made the best collard greens I've ever eaten. They were so good I had for them breakfast yesterday and today. Now I have a favorite breakfast: collard greens with grilled cheese on sour dough bread.

I made the greens with 1 smoked turkey neck. I saw a YouTube video where a black lady who appeared to know her way around a soul food kitchen used a smoked turkey leg to season her greens. I wish I could tell you the name of the YouTuber, but I can't. If I find out, I will update this post.

Anyway, her method sounded good, but I'm the only one in my house who eats meat and I didn't want to cook more than I could eat. So I went to the store and bought some smoked turkey necks--they were plenty meaty, but not as big as a turkey leg. I used one neck in this recipe and froze the rest.

I also got a bag of cut up collard greens. I washed the greens, threw them in the Instant Pot (you could also use a pressure cooker) along with 1/2 a chopped onion, and one turkey neck. I added water about 1/2 way up the greens...this was actually more water than was needed, but they still turned out great. You can also use chicken broth instead of water for a richer pot liquor.

I put the lid on the pot and set it to cook at high pressure for 8 minutes. I let it release its pressure slowly after it the 8 minutes then I took the lid off and scooped out the greens. I put the turkey neck back in there and put the lid back on and cooked it another 8 minutes under high pressure to loosen the meat up and make it tear off with a fork. After it was done, I took the neck out and pulled the meat off, adding it back to the pot with the collards and a healthy dose of pepper vinegar...I also added 5 or 6 of those little peppers from the jar. I let it cook another few minutes. If it's not salty enough with just the turkey neck, you can add some smoke salt.

The greens were amazing, but they were even more amazing the next day and the next. They were so good I was really glad I was the only one in the household that would eat them! I hope you enjoy this recipe! You might decide collard greens and grilled cheese is even better than collard greens and cornbread!