untying
The very first thing to do with greens is to release them from the tight little wrappers so many supermarket greens have on. Poor things, those wrappers strangle them.
washing
Now you need to determine whether they need washing.
With some greens, of course, it's immediately obvious that there are large chunks of soil clinging to them.
Others, however, may look superficially clean but have hidden reserves of grit in the curls and whorls of their leaves or where the leaves join the stems.
There are two good ways to check greens for hidden dirt. One is simply to finger them, feeling for any slight abrasion. The other is to thwack them on a smooth light-colored surface, like a light-colored kitchen counter or a dinner plate. You're looking for dislodged sand and powdery dirt.
Or you can simply assume, wearily, that all loose greens are likely to harbor some grit and wash them all without checking first. (If for some reason they're a little wilted, washing will help that too.)
Fill a sink with luke-warm water, dump the greens in, and swirl them around with your hand.
Now lift each individual green leaf out of the water, shake it off, and put it in a growing pile on a kitchen towel. This is a good time to discard any leaves that are slimy and vile, but don't get all snooty with your greens. There's no reason to worry about yellowing, spottiness, or insect chew; such blemishes are merely cosmetic flaws and will disappear in the general goodness of the finished braise.
When you have removed all the greens, examine the sink. If it looks clean, wipe it with your hand, feeling for tiny grits too small to see. If you feel any, rinse the sink clean, fill it with lukewarm water, and start all over again.
Washing greens is a good job for a kid who's tall enough to reach into the sink without standing on a chair.
When at last the greens are clean, breathe a sigh of relief -- the worst is over.
The cleaning problem typically arises with loose leafy greens. Tight greens like little torpedo-shaped endives and fisty radicchios are usually clean or at most have a trace of dirt right at the root end, easy to cut out. (Yes, radicchio counts as a green even though it's red.)
Many Asian greens, like bok choi and choy sum, are usually clean or, again, dirty only for a quarter-inch at the root end. Many brassicas, i.e. members of the cabbage family, come clean -- broccoli, kohlrabi greens, brussels sprouts, and cabbages themselves. But collards, kale, broccoli raab (rapini), and turnip tops are usually filthy; so is celery, from another of the great vegetable families, the umbellifers.
Most leafy herbs arrive clean, except for cilantro, which seems to have been dragged by a chain behind a pickup truck for seventy or eighty miles before being sent to the grocery store. Crisp-head lettuces are often clean; soft-heads, like cos, butter, and Boston lettuce, are often dirty. (Yes, you can braise lettuce, just like any other green, and it's darned good, too.)
Plastic-bagged and plastic-boxed greens are always clean. I used baby spinach from plastic bags for years till one day I made myself the treat of braised mature spinach and haven't been able to reconcile myself to the blander -- albeit amazingly clean -- baby spinach ever since. (I still use baby spinach raw in salads. Since I turned back to braising mature spinach, I've only ever seen one clean bunch. When I went back the next day for more, they were all gone, and I've never seen them again.
drying
If you washed your greens, now they're clean, but they're also very wet.
I couldn't run my kitchen without a supply of nice clean towels. I have a large collection of decorative towels that I use for doing dishes, and when a decorative towel gets ruined (such things happen) I move it to the big bin of utility towels that I keep under the sink. I've looked longingly at the beautiful big bags of plain white kitchen towels they sell at Kmart and Bed Bath & Beyond, but until I run out of ruined but still usable decorative towels I've denied myself the pleasure.
Start in on the drying process by spreading a kitchen towel out flat. Spread the clean, wet greens out on the towel. Then lay a second towel on top of the greens.
Now roll the bottom towel up, capturing the top towel and all the greens in between. The first pair of towels will immediately become waterlogged. Hang them up to dry and start in on another pair, and then another and another.
When the towels are no longer getting soaking wet, you can finish drying the greens in a salad spinner.
Find yourself an old-fashioned wheel‑around‑the‑porch salad spinner and you will never lack for volunteers to dry your greens. You load the towel-dry greens into the basket, step outside, and wheel your arm in a gigantic shoulder‑popping circle, using centrifugal force to drive more water out. Mine has disappeared, and I'd better replace it quick before Darwin gets any older.
cutting
[Think forward a moment; if you're going to be oven-braising, this is the time to preheat your oven to 300° or 325°. If you're oven-braising in a ceramic or clay pot, put it into the cold oven to preheat as the oven preheats.]
Now you need to decide whether to cut your greens. If they have stems that are thick or coarse or both, you must cut them; if not, you might want to cut the greens anyway to make them more tractable at the supper table.
Cut thin slices close to the bottom of the stem. Upward, you can let the slices get thicker or keep them as thin as the bottom, depending on what effect you want to have; it's up to you.
Some people prefer to cut the greens after they're cooked. That's OK too; it's harder to be precise, but precision doesn't matter much.
Or you can omit cutting them altogether and serve them with a sharp knife at each person's plate.
necessities for braising
As you might already know, braising meat requires a little liquid, a little fat, a close‑fitting covered pot, and low heat.
Vegetables, however, already contain plenty of liquid, so for braising vegetables you need only:
- a little fat
- a close-fitting covered pot
- low heat
fat
Here are some suggestions for the fat:
- bacon fat
- butter
- canola oil
- chicken fat
- duck fat
- goose fat
- olive oil
- peanut oil
Because you need only a little, and because you aren't going to be using high heat, you pretty much have a free choice here. The only requirement is that you have enough to film the bottom of the pot you're using.
pot or pan
The material of your pot or pan determines whether you're going to braise on the stovetop or in the oven.
For the stovetop, you need a heavy metal pan, and if you have such a pan I would always recommend stovetop braising for greens (not necessarily for other things).
If you have only a light-weight metal pan, you can braise greens in a slow (low‑temperature) oven. You can also oven-braise in a ceramic or clay pot.
For stovetop braising, you can cook twice the capacity of the pan at once. That sounds bizarre, but here's what happens: You put half the greens in the pan, clamp the lid on, and wait 2-3 minutes. The greens have cooked down that fast. You put the other half of the greens in, clamp the lid on again, and you're braising twice the capacity of the pan in one fell swoop.
So for stovetop braising, if you have, say, 8 quarts of greens, you can braise them in a 4‑quart pan.
For oven braising, you have to decide whether you want to pull the pan out of the hot oven and add more greens. If that's OK with you, then just as with the stovetop method, you can braise twice the capacity of the pot; if you'd rather not pull the pot out of the oven in the middle of the cooking, you can braise only the capacity of the pot.
So for oven braising, if you have, say, 8 quarts of greens, you can braise them in a 4‑quart pan by taking the pan out of the oven after the first 4 quarts have cooked down, or you can braise them in two 4-quart pans, or you can braise them in two complete batches, braising the first batch all the way and then the second batch all the way.
My favorite pan for braising greens is an All-Clad LTD 4-quart sauté pan with lid. It's one of those purchases that seem dizzyingly expensive at first and then blessedly inexpensive for the rest of your life.
fat in pot or pan
("Fat in pot or pan" -- sounds like Dr. Seuss, yes?)
OK, so now you have chosen your fat and gotten out your pot. Your first job is to film the bottom of the pot with the fat. When I'm feeling relaxed and patient, I can make 1 Tablespoon of oil film the bottom of my pan by turning and twisting it this way and that. When I'm in a hurry, 2 Tablespoons is generous for my pan; it may be too much or too little for yours.
greens in pot or pan
Now heap as much of your pile of greens into your pot as you can, and put the lid on. I find it's often helpful to add an upended shallow bowl to weight the lid.
stove-top braising
Put the pan over a brisk flame and listen carefully till you can hear the first crackle from the greens. Immediately turn the flame down to low (the lowest point at which a gas flame will continue to burn, or the notch marked LOW for an electric burner).
After 2-3 minutes, when the greens have cooked down, open the pan and add the other half of the greens. Clamp the top back on. After another 2-3 minutes, open the pot and stir the greens around with tongs or a long-handled pancake turner.
How long to continue cooking the greens? It depends entirely on you and your intentions for the greens. Sometimes I like mine cooked to melting, other times I want them tender-crisp. There is no one right way.
Here's a neat trick I just learned from eating at Matt Dillon's Seattle restaurant Sitka & Spruce (not the movie-star Matt Dillon, the chef Matt Dillon): Stovetop-braise some heavy greens, like mustard greens or kale, and when they're just barely tender take the top off the pan and finish them by letting all the liquid evaporate away and then browning them just a little. Very good. Takes concentration.
oven braising
I need to experiment more with oven braising before I can write it up.