“Greens” refers to the leafy part. You can also get turnip greens, mustard greens, dandelion greens, etc.
Awww yeah! Collards! Ain’t you glad they’s a suthren boy on lemmy?
All “greens”, even the ones that aren’t necessarily green green (like how mustard and turnip greens can be slightly yellowish, or a lighter green sometimes and not be a sign of poor growing conditions) fall under the general heading because they’re the leafy part of a plant that’s predominantly green in plants overall.
Collards go back a millennia or two at least, as a cultivated plant. And that means that humans were planting and growing them (just in case cultivated as refers to agriculture was unfamiliar) for a very long time.
During that time, they’ve spread across the world, and came to the U.S. largely on the heels of slavery. This is despite them having gotten to Africa from other places originally, with some debate as to exactly where they were first cultivated.
The reason you don’t see anything other than green is because people aren’t growing those varieties as much, and not many grocers carry them. You really only see them when home gardeners grow them in my neck of the woods.
But, they come in as many colors as any other brassica. Purple, blue, red (ish), yellow and whitish varieties exist (and are just as yummy).
But, no mistake, collards have been bred and changed into a wide array of configurations. There’s longer stemmed versions, wrinklier ones, and there’s some variety of flavor between them all, ranging from heavily bitter but rich, to almost sweet with a more spinach/kale taste, and some that are both very bitter and kinda sweet, with every combination of those overlapping the earthiness and distinct brassica flavor.
All of them cook the same though! A quick bit of heat to wilt, then a low & slow braise with whatever extras you prefer (I’m usually a beef or chicken stock + apple cider vinegar guy, but I ain’t mad at a nice ham hock).
Grits is groceries, collards is comestibles.
Edit: also, for anyone interested, there’s a guy named Michael Twitty, a truly amazing man that has dedicated himself to educating people about food, food history, and the cultural ties around that. If you search his name along with collards, he’s written on the subject way better than I have here, and was the source for a big chunk of what I know about collards beyond the cooking of them.
Because “greens” is the general term for plant leaves we eat such as spinach, chard, kale or the leaves of other vegetable plants like carrots. Some people just call them collards.
Carrot tops/greens are so freaking good. I blend it into a pesto and put it on grilled cheese sandwiches. Fibrous as hell, like eating ground up rope, but OMG it’s so good. Especially a little caramelized onion and some apple on there… I’m so hungry
That’s interesting! I noticed organic carrots often come with them and others don’t, and had heard they’re edible but had no idea what to do with them.
They’re really, really good. But don’t make the mistake of eating parsnip tops! If you Google it some of the results say edible, some say poison. I err on the side of caution there. Lol. But carrot tops are 100% amazing, if you don’t mind the stringiness.
Makes sense… parsnips are pretty weird.
In a similar vein, I prefer celery leaves over the stalks. They have a better flavor imo and they don’t feel like your chewing on stringy water.
I like to cut celery super thin and sautee it, which fixes the stringiness, cause the fibers are so short. Great flavor if you get enough of it in to taste it lol
Rainbow shard is not collards. You may be conflating the two. Collards are very related to kale. That same species, Brassica oleracea, gives us the cultivars cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, and gai lan.
well if it births cauliflower how come you don’t see white collards? Or any other color?
Collard greens are the leaves. Cauliflower is the flower head. Flowers are often a different color from the leaves, especially in species that rely on animals for pollination. Additionally, cauliflower is white, in part, because of a lack of chlorophyll. If collard greens had no chlorophyll in the leaves, then the plant would not be able to grow. If they can’t grow, then they aren’t likely to end up on a dinner plate or for sale in a grocery store.
omg dude you can’t just ask about white collards
alternate joke: I guess you could say it’s a white collard crime?
They’re green because they’re leaves. Leaves are green because of chlorophyll.
They’re not that green in color. Some are almost blue-black.
Don’t know, but speaking collards.
Without checking the etymology, I’d guess it comes from German, where ‘kohl’ is a word meaning leaf, as in coleslaw or kohlrabi.
So collard greens would just be leafy greens.
Collards are a specific variety of brassicacea like cauliflower, broccoli, etc. Not a generic term.
I never said it was a generic term. Cabbage for coleslaw, kohlrabi etc are all brassicas.
I gotcha, I just misunderstood the intention of your comment! My bad lol
Kohl does not mean leaf in German.
Then what’s the common part with rotkohl?
What do you mean by “common part”? Kohl is just cabbage. Rotkohl is red cabbage. Because it’s cabbage that is red.
Now you’ve made me hungry.
So the etymology answer is collard greens are cabbage greens because they’re in the same family.
Collard greens are in the brassica family, and the coll / caul / cole syllable is often used for those (cauliflower, cole slaw).
