Friday, September 14, 2012

Epic Fail!!!!! Turnip greens... ugh....

Well, I always thought I was a southern girl.  But evidently the Paula Deen gene is not in my pool.  I tried turnip greens today.  From scratch.  Using Paula's recipe on foodnetwork.com  loosely...  my own interpretation... that may be the part I shoulda skipped. LOL

First of all, I bought fresh turnip greens from the farmers market yesterday, brought them home and tried washing them, cause dang they were sandy!  Well, I washed the heck out of them last night, and left them in a pan of water all day today, and when I got home from work, I was gonna cook them....  Well, they smelled like dead cat poop.  omg! I had to throw them out. I rinsed and rinsed, but ugh...  they stunk up my whole house...

Well, I was not to be defeated!!!  So I go to my little grocery store on the corner, and buy a hog jowl and 3 bunches of fresh turnip greens, and by golly, I'm gonna do it!!!

I bring it home, put the hog jowl in water with some bacon grease and boil the crap out of it for 2 hours... in the meantime, I start washing the turnip greens.  I rinsed them once.... twice.... three times.   Then I spent the better part of an hour desteming them but they still felt sandy, so I rinsed them again..... and again....  I made piles of them on the counter on dishtowels to drain.

Once the hog jowl got semi tender, I took it out of the water to cool, and diced up a turnip and added it to the water.  I let it simmer about a half hour.  Then I added the two huge mounds of turnip greens that I felt like I had blood invested in, cause I spent sooooo much time on the damned things.  I added some pepper flakes, salt and pepper to the water, and added the humongous mounds of turnip greens to the pot.  within seconds it cooked down (as I expected) and I let it simmer for about 1/2 hour.

I went in for the taste... added some more salt, and then it hit me.... too much red pepper flakes!  oh my!  a bit too spicy... but I thought, OK, keep trying....

Then I started stirring and I could feel the grit on the bottom of the pan!!!!  I washed the bejeebers out of that crap, and it still had sand in it.

I give up.  I give up my title as a southern cook.  If I can't cook turnip greens, then I'm definitely turning in my crown.  Hanging head in shame......

From now on, I will be buying my turnip greens from the freezer case... If I'm banished from the south, I apologize ahead of time.

If anyone has any suggestions, Please PLEASE let me know.  I just can not go to my grave not being able to cook turnip greens. (just kidding)

Ok, That is all for today.  I still have all my yogurt stuff to post.  Will try to get to that tomorrow.

And for lack of any other cutesie tag line...... PEACE OUT!!!!!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dinah, you have to fill the whole sink with water, put in 5 leaves or so, agitate then allow the water to settle. The sand should fall to the bottom. Then gently without agitating remove the floating leaves. I usually have to do this 3 times before I feel they are sand free enough to eat. I do this with spinach and loose leaf lettuce from the garden too (the slugs fall to the bottom too :).

Dinah said...

oh geez, thanks for the info Ananymous, but I don't know if I have the patience for that! LOL I would have been there for days with 5 or so leaves at a time. maybe i'm just an impatient cook. who knows? thanks for the feedback tho. I may get brave again some day....

Debbie Moree said...

Dinah, they also sell bags of pre-washed greens at walmart that`s what i`ve used!!

Anonymous said...

Love the blog... Hate turnip greens. Must be a Yankee SJS