Throughout the fall and spring I have been harvesting pounds and pounds of collard greens. I have filled up bags for any friends or family members who enjoy collard greens. But as the weather began heating up and since my collards were planted last year, they started to flower.
This would normally mean it is time to allow a few plants to go to seed and then pull the rest to make room for some summer crops. But as a few of my plants were going to seed I noticed that their pods were coming in nice and plump, so I decided to keep them all in and hope for a large harvest of these seed pods. After a few weeks of the plants flowering, I was pleasantly surprised with a massive amount of tender seed pods. I would say in general you can cook these like you would any string bean.
In today’s recipe, I went ahead and steamed the collard beans, then sprinkled on a bit of salt and pepper. If you are wanting to grow your own collard beans you will need to allow the plants to go through two growing seasons. Also when you start harvesting be sure to not let the seed pods stand too long or they will begin to harden up and become unusable. Though I have found that if you continually harvest the tender seed pods the plant will produce more for a few weeks if you stay on top of it.
If you go ahead and try this recipe, let me know what you think and share a picture on my Instagram and Facebook page of how it turned out!
