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Turnip Greens
Updated April 19, 2024
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- Total Time
- About 1½ hours
- Prep Time
- 5 minutes
- Cook Time
- 1 hour and 20 minutes
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
- 3bunches turnip greens (about 1 ½ pounds), see Tip
- 3tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1large yellow onion, finely chopped
- 4garlic cloves, minced
- 2tablespoons balsamic vinegar
- 4cups vegetable or chicken stock, plus more if necessary
- ¼teaspoon ground cayenne, plus more to taste
- Salt and black pepper
- ½teaspoon smoked paprika, plus more to taste
Preparation
- Step 1
Tear the turnip green leaves from their stems; discard the stems (if you like, tender, thin stems can be sliced and cooked along with the leaves). Stack several leaves on top of one another, roll them up, and then slice them. Put the pieces in a large bowl or sink filled with water. Swish them around; any debris will sink to the bottom. Remove the greens, drain the water and repeat if needed.
- Step 2
Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven or large, heavy skillet over medium-high. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 7 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring often, until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes.
- Step 3
Add the balsamic vinegar and deglaze the pan by scraping up any browned bits. Add the stock, greens, cayenne, 1½ teaspoons salt and ½ teaspoon pepper to the pot. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Cook uncovered for 30 minutes, then stir in the smoked paprika. Continue cooking until the greens are tender and no longer taste bitter, about 30 minutes longer (you may need to add a splash of stock or water if the liquid evaporates before the greens are cooked to your liking).
- Step 4
Taste to adjust the seasoning, adding more salt, cayenne or smoked paprika, if desired.
- To save time, look for prewashed and trimmed turnip greens in bags.
Private Notes
Cooking Notes
I grow the multicolored Swiss chard, beet greens with no beets, in fall and winter. Here in Seattle it does really well and only dies if we have a rare hard freeze. I cooked this with the Swiss chard and it looked so pretty with the bright colored stems. Tasted great too.
Greens are so good for us and so delicious when well cooked. If you haven't liked them until now, that may be because they're usually not well cooked. I'm going out to buy 3 bunches of turnip greens tomorrow and can't wait to make them in this amazing-looking sauce. Wow. Thanks, Vallery Lomas!
Don’t skimp on the cayenne. Really flavorful and an excellent way to cook hearty garden greens.
Great with all kinds of greens, all too often thrown out (!) yet so flavorful and rich with lots of vitamins & minerals too! Note #1 - better to preserve the B vitamins esp if greens were soaked/washed 1st, B4 cutting. Just the cutting loses vitamins but you'll throw out precious nutrients with the soak water if cut 1st. Note #2 - I make this often but use stock or water to deglaze the pan. Won't lose as much vinegar flavor, easier to clean pan. Well my balsamic is rather thick. Just sayin'.
made this today with the turnip greens from my CSA box! I ate it with some crusty bread as a light WFH lunch - delicious but really weirdly salty! maybe it's just the broth I used (vegetable better than bouillon) but it was almost too salty to eat - next time if I use the same broth I will try cutting the salt completely & just adding it at the end if needed. the balsamic and paprika are great in this though, and I loved how easy it was to make during the workday
I made this with the beet greens from the beets in my CSA box and they were delicious!
Turnip and bok choy are both cultivars of the species Brassica rapa. Of course, Donald Trump and, say, Taylor Swift are members of the same species, so that doesn't mean they will be identical.
I like to add a little sugar or honey to the vinegar to give it a little sweet ‘n sourness. Really brightens up the flavors.
Very fresh bunches of radish greens work well, too— l steam a bit of fish on top at the end.
Do this recipe with the addition of turnips peeled and diced. Even better.
It looks so healthy, but why does it still have so much sodium? Is it the broth?
I grow the multicolored Swiss chard, beet greens with no beets, in fall and winter. Here in Seattle it does really well and only dies if we have a rare hard freeze. I cooked this with the Swiss chard and it looked so pretty with the bright colored stems. Tasted great too.
Greens are so good for us and so delicious when well cooked. If you haven't liked them until now, that may be because they're usually not well cooked. I'm going out to buy 3 bunches of turnip greens tomorrow and can't wait to make them in this amazing-looking sauce. Wow. Thanks, Vallery Lomas!
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