I’m not always in the mood (or don’t always have the time) to wash, stem, and chop greens on the fly. For busy days, a home cooked dinner can only happen if I have a few things on hand that I can grab and just toss into a pan.
When I came home from the farmer’s market last week with 2 beautiful bunches of fresh kale and 2 bunches of beets (w/ greens attached), this is what I did to make life easy for the rest of the week….
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I removed the stems (simply lay each leaf down with the stem facing right & the leaves facing left to do this with one easy slice).
Then I used my hands to roughly tear up the leaves and tossed them into a large, over-the-sink-colander. After rinsing the leaves thoroughly in cool water, I spun them in a salad spinner to remove most of the water (you can also gently pat them down with a clean towel or paper towels).
I then lined a gallon sized storage bag with paper towels (use 2 paper towels – still attached to each other).
And then, of course, I placed the leaves in the bag for easy use throughout the week.
1 large bunch of kale will yield roughly two 6 oz bags of greens, so including my beet greens, I ended up with 5 bags of greens — stemmed, chopped, washed, dried, and ready to go.
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A few ways I’ve recently used my “just toss ’em in a pan” greens…..
- Roasted bone-in/skin-on chicken breasts and legs with balsamic-roasted-beets and sautéed beet greens w/ garlic
- Lamb stew with vegetables – including kale (I’ll be posting this recipe soon)
- Peppers-onions-kale-&-eggs (I simply used sautéed kale & garlic in place of the lamb sausage that I originally suggested in my recipe). Of course, all of my recipes can be altered any way you’d like — depending on what you have on hand and what you’re in the mood for…
- Simple-stovetop-chicken-breast with a side of buttery-rice-w-greens
- Potatoes-greens-rosemary-&-garlic (shown below)
