Collard greens are member of the cruciferous family and seem like loose green leaves. However, their leaves are larger, smooth, and plain as compared to kale, another cruciferous vegetable. Being a more versatile and handy vegetable, it goes great in stews, soups, casseroles, salads, and various cooked food dishes. But the prime question is that can you eat collard greens raw?
And what does uncooked collard greens taste like? Where you can use it raw? And what are some delicious ways of prepping and cooking collard greens? All this and much more facts related to this leafy veggie come right ahead. So, let’s know them in detail.
Can You Eat Collard Greens Raw?
Yes, you can eat collard greens raw, and it tastes incredibly amazing. You can enjoy uncooked collard leaves to make your routine diet healthy and colorful.
Collard leaves are low in calorie content, but they are rich in other essential nutrients. Therefore, they could be best if you want to cut down the fat and calorie content in your diet.
Their high vitamin, mineral, and fiber content make them the healthiest choice for food dishes.
However, collard greens also go best when sautéed, steamed, and blanched. Their flavor tends to become more concentrated and intense on cooking and thus become the first choice of professionals.
Sometimes, people think that cooking may lose the essential nutrients of leafy vegetables, but slight cooking or blanching doesn’t affect the nutritional profile of veggies. It could happen on intensive or prolonged cooking.
However, this leafy veggie goes great both as cooked and uncooked. So, you can enjoy it in your own way that makes you excited and satisfied.
What Does Raw Collard Greens Taste Like?
Unlike other leafy vegetables, collard greens are mild to taste and less bitter. And its flavor seems like a cross between kale and cabbage.
While enjoying raw, you must have to remove its thick stems and ribs making it easy to chew and digest.
Raw collard leaves go best in sandwiches, salads, and wraps. So, you can add either larger pieces of leaves or chopped leaves in your beloved recipe calling for uncooked collard greens.
Besides eating raw, one can also enjoy the more complex and subtle earthy flavor of cooked collard leaves. You can add them to omelette mixture, pizza topping, stews, and casseroles.
Thus, it is up to you whether you want to enjoy a mild leafy flavor or a subtle sweet and earthy flavor. Go with your taste preferences and exploit the versatility of this vegetable.
Ways of Prepping And Eating Collard Greens
Prepare the delicious vegetable salad, wraps, sandwiches, and slaws whenever you want to enjoy raw collard leaves and their unique leafy flavor.
However, you can also enjoy the cooked collard leaves by incorporating them to your food dishes in various ways. For instance, they can make your regular stews, casseroles, meat recipes, and savory side dishes exceptional and appetizing.
Besides this, you can also sauté, stir fry, or braise them alone to prepare nice recipes that you can either serve as a side dish or a main menu dish.
Stir-frying: To enjoy collard greens alone, try stir-frying. Firstly, chop the fresh leaves after removing central ribs and thick terminal stems. After that, fry them with some olive oil. Add seasoning herbs and spices to your taste. And, cook them for 3 to 4 minutes.
Roasting: It could probably be the best method of prepping leafy veggies. It yields more flavorful and mouth-watering food products than one can imagine. After chopping, mix some herbs such as parsley and cilantro with adding spices. Roast them with some oil and enjoy.
Braising: It is another way of prepping collard leaves yielding a tasty meal. For that purpose, boil or simmer them in broth or red wine with salt and chilli flakes. And, you can enjoy it either as a side dish or a central dinner dish.
In addition, you can also add collard greens to scrambled eggs, savory wraps, smoothies, and soups to get more out of this veggie rather than just eating it raw.
Read Also: What Does Celery Taste Like?
Storing Collard Greens
If you have bought a good deal of collard greens and want to store them for later use, you can follow the given guide step by step.
Like other leafy vegetables, collard leaves also lose their freshness and hardy texture. So, store them properly to lock their freshness and characteristic flavor.
For that, put the leaves in air-tight bags without washing because excessive water makes them slimy. Remove extra air from the bag and seal them tightly. And put this bag in the refrigerator.
This way, you can use your favorite veggie for several days without compromising its taste and texture.
Final Words
Collard greens are versatile enough to be enjoyed both as raw and cooked. So, you can eat collard greens raw and it goes great this way. Its taste is comparatively mild and less bitter than kale when consumed raw. However, the flavor tends more toward the sweet side with slight earthy notes on cooking.
So, it is up to you whether you want to enjoy them uncooked, sautéed, fried, and roasted.