We’ve been eating chard recently, and I like to cook it so it’s spicy and hot (we use red pepper flakes for heat and minced garlic for flavor).  I thought I should write it down and share it, so here is the recipe, with a photo tutorial of step-by-step instructions for our spicy chard greens.

INGREDIENTS FOR

BEAN AND BANTAM GARLICKY HOT CHARD GREENS

1. We use red or white chard (rainbow chard is fine too).
2. 2-3 cloves garlic
3. olive oil (1 TB)
4. salt (1 tsp)
5. red pepper flakes
6. lemon
7. pepper

PREPARATION

Crush the closes of garlic with the wide flat blade of your chopping knife on a cutting board and remove the papery peel.  Mince the garlic finely, or roughly chopped as you prefer.  We roughly mince ours as shown below.

Chop the brown stem end off of the bunch of chard greens and discard.  Then, as shown in the picture below, chop the “ribs” of the chard into 1 inch pieces.  These will go into the pan to cook before the leafy green part, as the stems and ribs take longer to cook.  If the “rib” extends up into the leaf and remains quite thick, tear the leafy green from the thick rib portions and chop the stem or rib.  Set the stems and ribs aside.

Heat the pan on medium heat.  Add olive oil.  Add the chopped chard ribs or stems to the pan and stir.  Shake some salt on.

Cover the rib sections and return to the cutting board to chop the leafy green sections.

Gather the leafy “head” portion of the chard together and chop roughly across about every 2-3 inches.

When the edges of the stem ends are slightly tender, but not yet cooked (see below), you are ready to add the chopped greens.

If you haven’t been using the captions, here is a summary of cooking once the stems/ribs are just barely cooked:

Add the chopped greens to the pan and do NOT stir, just leave them heaped on top–these greens will steam while the stems/ribs continue to cook below . The newly chopped greens will heap up high, and cook down low.  Add some salt on top of the chopped greens before you cover the pan.

I find it’s useful to use a wok-type pan, or a pan with high sides but if you just have a regular frying pan, it will work, you will just have to really set the lid down on top of the greens and stir more frequently as they wilt.

The greens begin to wilt, and then they wilt some more.  The greens should be bright green — if overcooked, they will get to be a muddy green.

Add the minced/chopped garlic to the pan, and the red pepper flakes, and ground black pepper, to taste.  Stir!

Remove from heat so they do not continue to cook and get olive green (although they are edible that way, I prefer them bright green).  Happy eating!  Do you have a favorite greens recipe?  Feel free to link to it below.

We use this pot rest, picked up at a rummage sale, which has a honeycomb and oak leaf pattern.

We are generous with spices in our cooking, and we like some heat.  We are looking  for a better solution than piling all of the spices into a drawer (a drawer away from the heat of the stove).  They only have room to be on their sides in the drawer, and we find that some of the caps aren’t that tight–we have a sort of unintentional spice potpourri at the drawer bottom.

Enter your email, press the follow button above for Bean & Bantam posts by email delivery!