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Beet Greens (Wash and pick over the greens)
Wash and pick over the greens carefully; add one cup of boiling water for each quart of greens. Boil slowly for ten minutes; place kettle in cooker for two hours. Drain off the water; add salt, pepper and butter; reheat and serve.
A fireless cooker recipe: food is brought to a boil on the stove, then transferred to an insulated box to finish on retained heat. The method works, but two hours of residual heat will reduce beet greens to something very soft indeed.
- What the cooker isA fireless cooker (also called a hay box) is an insulated chest that holds a heated kettle so the contents coast down slowly from boiling. In the simplest versions nothing is added and the two hours are just the time the food spends losing heat, though many cookers of the period also used heated soapstone or iron discs to keep the temperature up. A heavy pot wrapped in towels inside a cooler approximates it.
- On a modern stoveBeet greens are tender and need very little. Washed, with only the water clinging to the leaves plus a splash more, they collapse and cook through in five to eight minutes in a covered pan. The ten-minute boil in this recipe is already sufficient; the cooker stage is about fuel economy, not doneness.
- Quantity of waterOne cup of boiling water per quart of greens is generous by current practice, since it leaches colour and the mineral flavour out into the water. In the Southern greens tradition that drained liquid, pot likker, was often kept and drunk or used as stock rather than discarded.
- Measuring greensGreens are measured here by volume, loosely packed. A quart of raw beet greens is roughly a large handful or two, about 4 to 6 ounces, and cooks down to a small side portion. Plan on a pound of untrimmed greens for two to three people.
- Grit"Wash and pick over carefully" is the operative instruction. Beet greens grow low and hold sand in the crinkled leaf and at the base of the stem; wash in a bowl of standing water, lift the leaves out, and repeat until no sand settles.
- StemsThe recipe treats the greens as one thing, but the red stems are firmer than the leaves. If the stems are thicker than a pencil, slice them and give them two or three minutes' head start.
- FinishingSalt, pepper and butter after draining is the whole seasoning. A spoonful of cider vinegar or a squeeze of lemon at the table is a common accompaniment and does more for beet greens than additional butter.
Fireless cookery had a serious vogue in American household manuals from roughly the 1900s through the 1920s, and cookbooks of the period often carried a whole section of it. The appeal was fuel: a coal or wood range had to be stoked and watched, and anything that could be brought to a boil and then walked away from saved both money and a hot kitchen in summer. The principle is simply insulation, and homemade versions were packed with hay, excelsior or newspaper, which is where the common name hay box comes from. Beet greens themselves belong to an older habit of thrift, the beet root being the crop and the tops a second harvest that would otherwise go to the compost or the pig. They are the same species as chard, Beta vulgaris, and taste much like it.