Food for the Soul: How to make healthier greens

The most traditional soul food dish, especially at New Years, has to be greens.

Cooks in the Black Belt make it so many different ways with so many different ingredients.

For the new video series Food for the Soul, Dallas County cook Alicia Chestnut made her greens recipe with turnip greens from her garden and added colorful peppers. Instead of boiling hers, like many do, Chestnut sautéed her ingredients together with olive oil for a crunchy, flavorful dish. Chestnut also didn’t use ham, which is a popular addition, but in this edition of Food for the Soul, she talks about meat options.

Food for the Soul is a project of the Selma Sun and Black Belt News Network along with nonprofit partner Our Community Doc and features videos of Dallas County cooks making popular soul food dishes with a healthier twist. The first recipe was for mac n cheese made by Lashun Langdon, owner of Happiness 27 in Selma.

The greens and mac n cheese videos are now live on Black Belt News Network’s YouTube channel and at BlackBeltNewsNetwork.com under the Health Matters tab.

Two more recipes will drop live on YouTube in the next month for making oven fried chicken and sweet potato tarts.

All four dishes will be great for Thanksgiving, so save these recipes and use with your family this year.

Greens

Ingredients:

1 pound bunch of collards

½ chopped onion

1 small bell pepper, red, green, yellow

More from this section

Tobacco is still one of the world’s top killers – here are the key obstacles to enacting generational smoking bans

A little-understood sleep disorder affects millions and has clear links to dementia – 4 questions answered

Recent studies prove the ancient practice of nasal irrigation is effective at fighting the common cold

1 Tablespoon crusted, chopped garlic fresh or minced in a jar

1 medium tomato chopped or canned chopped tomatoes

3-4 Tablespoons olive oil or canola oil

½ Teaspoon low sodium soy sauce

Black pepper to taste

2 Tablespoons hot water

Directions:

Cut stems off the collards. Wash greens in water. In large pot, add olive oil, sauté onions, garlic, bell peppers. Add chopped tomatoes.

Add chopped or shredded collards to the pot. Stir. Let simmer for 5 minutes.

Add 2 tablespoons of hot water. Cover the pot and cook until tender. Add water if needed for steaming. Sprinkle black pepper and add soy sauce.

Cover the pot and simmer on low for another 5 minutes. Then serve.