Wait a second, I can totally do that with a rice cooker! Now thinking back, there was a Pot O’Greens episode on Good Eats. If I skip the turkey leg, and use the rice cooker to simmer the stuff, I could make some tasty greens. I could even toss some hard veggies on top like potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, mirlitons, beets, or rutabagas. Maybe even some broccoli, zucchini, or squash.

That was what I thought of before I first did it. This is the 4th or 5th time I’ve cooked greens this way, and it’s turned out pretty well. This time I made kale, sweet potato, turnip, and mirliton. 

First I cut the stems off of the kale.

Then I rinsed the kale in some water.

I wanted some turnips, so i peeled some.

And cubed them. That ugly thing over there is a mirliton. And they will get even uglier. They’re actually quite delicious. Some places call them chayotes, others call them vegetable pears, but here in New Orleans they’re called mirlitons.

They’re filled with a big skinny seed that kinda seperates it down the middle of the vegetable.

That’s the one, best way to do it is to slice it in have and carve it out. You actually don’t have to cut off the skin, but I didn’t feel like eating it.

After I sliced the mirliton into fry shapes, I went onto the sweet potato.

Then I tossed in the kale into the pan and loaded the other veggies on top.

I made the mirlitons into fry shapes so that I could tell them apart from the turnips.

I then added 4 cups of water since I had a large bunch of kale (I’m guessing ~2lbs).

I do about 2 cups per pound of greens. Always best to go on the upper side of that too. You don’t want to run out of water, and it doesn’t hurt to do a little bit more.

I added 1/2 cup of vinegar to cut out the weird taste that greens have.

Earlier I did a 1/4 of a cup for a pound of turnip greens and it turned out well, so I used a 1/2 a cup of apple cider vinegar for the kale, but it was a bit on the vinegary side.

Tossed in some salt.

And some sugar.

Worried about putting in all the salt and sugar? I’m not really worried. Most of that will go out in the liquid when I drain it. Only some will seep into the food. I wouldn’t really ingest much of the sugar and salt.

Also, a tablespoon of sugar is also like 13 grams of a sugar. You get 39 grams of sugar in a can of coke. Can you really say that you’re cutting back on sugar if you drink a coke, but didn’t add the couple grams of sugar? I think not.

Now I could mix it up, but why? It’s all going to go into the liquid after some evaporation then condensation. I don’t see much difference if I just let science do my work for me. Plus I’m going for a quick and easy method. That’s just an extra step that I don’t need to do.

So I cook it in the rice cooker for an hour. Or basically until everything can be poked by a fork and taste alright.

Don’t have one of these sweet Japanese rice cookers? I’m sure the American rice cookers will do alright. They basically do the same thing, make water boil and then let it simmer.

I then strained out the juices and I was done.

So the amount of work is:

• a couple of easy to clean dishes
• 5 minutes of cutting and pouring
• a very tough button pressing
• an even tougher straining job

The amount of food is either:

• 2 different sides for 4 meals
• 2 meals for a vegetarian or vegan (if you use vegan sugar)

I like to use this method of cooking greens because it so fast and easy. I can also through in extra stuff, and I have food for days.

Also, greens are pretty easy to grow in a vegetable garden, if you can keep pest off them. If you have access to a garden area, they’ll make a very cheap meal.

I let the kitchenaid stand-mixer knead the dough. After it was all keanded, the bowl was cleaned and oiled. The dough went back in the bowl to rise.

An hour later, it had doubled. 

And then tossed onto a clean, oiled counter. 

Then cut into 8 pieces. 

Check out those arms. Their dough rolling machines! Check out the minutes of experience that they have!

Rolling out the fatter end will make the dough ropes more even. 

All rolled out. Even lengths and thickness is essential! jk

Started some water and baking soda boiling. 

Some rolled dough formed into knots. Pressing down the joints will keep the pretzels formed into knots. It will puff back up in the water.  

Tossed in boiling water for half a minute. The white stuff around it is the baking soda. It’s ok, it’ll come off easily. 

I just used a slitted spatula to pull out the pretzels. 

Placed onto some parchment paper and salted with some sea salt. I skipped the egg washed, it was fine without it. Make sure you use good parchment paper, otherwise they will stick to the parchment paper and you’ll have to cut off the bottoms. 

After they baked in a 425F oven for about 10 minutes, they came out incredible. 

You could eat it with some mustard. 

Or make a pretzel sammich (I suggest making some pretzels without salt for this). It’s alot like a bagel sammich, but fancier. 

I made one for lunch the next day. 

These pretzels are made from the same dough used in simple bread, pizza dough, bagels, or whatever.

I looked up a few recipes, but the easiest I found was from Alton Brown (Good Eats). At first I used sea salt out of neccessity, but then I found some pickling salt, a better choice to use. If you can find pickling salt, I’d suggest using that. If not, then I would try to use to a decent sea salt. Kosher salt may or may not work as well (I havent’ given a shot, but I hear it’s ok), but DO NOT use Iodized Salt. Salts (especially iodized salt) usually have anti-caking agents that will cloud up the brine, however pickling salts do not contain them. Thus, if you can obtain it, I would highly recommend using it. It also seems to be a cheaper salt since it’s without additives. 

From what I gather from other recipes, as well as Alton’s, pickling is basically tossing the to-be-pickled-food (such as okra) into a brine of about 3% acid and 5-10% pure table salt. I can only guess that the acidic brine breaks apart cell walls to tenderize the okra as well as creating a poor environment for unwanted guest (bacteria, fungi, etc.). 

Now for the fun part. I chopped off the tops of the okra. 

However I left some of the top on, otherwise if the pod is damaged then the brine will get gooey from the okra-goo. 

I added the salt, vinegar, and water to pot and set it on high to boil. 

As the brine is heating up, I stuff all the okra into some jars that had some pickling spice (from Dekalb Farmers Market). 

I added the boiling brine and capped them. After cooling, I put them in the fridge. 

After 2 weeks, they were kinda “fresh” and not exactly ready. After 1 month, they were definately ready and delicious. I’m not a huge fan of the pickling spice that I bought, but I still find the pickles a good snack.