Foodie Fails: Paula Deen’s Salty Collard Greens

When I was 12 years old, my family moved from upstate NY to North Carolina and started the transition into “southern” life. Shortly after the move, our neighbors invited us over to their house to watch a football game and they were cooking up all the southern fixins’, so we figured we would contribute one of our own and spoiler alert, it didn’t go well…

yankees attempt deen’s greens

To try and fit in, we looked to the queen of butter and southern food: Paula Deen. We chose to tackle her collard greens because we already had a leftover ham hock from a previous night. Luckily, my grandma was in attendance for this adventure and well suited for the job because she was known for her manast (an Italian soup with beans and greens).

We read over the recipe and it seemed simple enough, so we started cooking. Everything was going well until we reached the seasonings section… Looking back, I’m not surprised I made this mistake because I was notorious for not reading recipes all the way through due to impatience/hunger. In my defense, my dad and grandma also read over the recipe and made the same mistake I did…just sayin’.

where it all went wrong

Anyway, to season the greens, Paula calls for 1 tablespoon seasoned salt (easy enough) and 1 tablespoon “house seasoning,” which was described in a separate section. The house seasoning is comprised of 1 cup of salt, ¼ cup black pepper, and ¼ cup garlic powder… can you guess where this runaway train is heading? Yes, instead of adding only a tablespoon of this MIXTURE to the pot per the recipe, we thought we were supposed to add the entire cup of salt, enough pepper to choke a horse, and an ungodly amount of garlic powder to these poor innocent collard greens. I believe our reasoning was that Paula Deen loves butter, so she must love a ton of salt too?

I don’t know why my dad and grandma both followed my lead on this one, but they did and we ended up with the saltiest (and also pepperiest) mixture I’ve ever tasted in my life. We didn’t have much time before the party though, so we had to think on our feet to make this salt- lick of a pot edible. Using their combined 50 years of kitchen knowledge, my dad and grandma performed culinary surgery on this pot of greens.

potatoes and beer save the day

They used a ton of potatoes (which absorbed the salt), water, and beer (which waters down the salt, while still adding flavor) to salvage the dish. After adding all these ingredients, the greens were slightly edible and we had to get to the party. We all walked in and my grandma kept whispering to my dad to play it cool and not tell anyone what happened, so we could see their natural reaction.

We were expecting to be met with wincing and possibly gagging at the party, but instead our neighbors praised us Yankees for making some down-home southern food. They were curious why there were potatoes in the greens, but we just made up something about our Irish roots sneaking in there.

Every year when my grandma would come to our house for Christmas, we would all get a good laugh about the terrible collard greens that we brought back to life. I don’t think we ever looked back to figure out what the mistake was (until just now), we just laughed about how the neighbors loved them so much. Even though this dish was a complete failure, it is one of my most cherished memories of being in the kitchen with my grandma and I will never forget it.  If you’ve had a similar kitchen disaster, comment it below so we can be in this together!