Chipotle Ground Chicken with Shredded Collard Greens
Ground chicken browned hard with chipotle and jalapeno, then tossed with collard greens sliced into ribbons and wilted in the same pan, finished with lime.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
Collards get treated as a vegetable that needs an afternoon, which is true of whole leaves in a pot and completely untrue of leaves rolled and sliced into quarter-inch ribbons. Cut that way the surface area does the work for you and they are tender in six or seven minutes, with a chew that holds up rather than collapsing into the pan. Stripping the stems takes two minutes: fold each leaf in half along the rib and run a knife down the fold, or just pull the leaf away from the stem with your hands.
The chicken needs to brown properly or this dish has no floor under it. Ground chicken carries a lot of water and it will sit and simmer in a pan that is not hot enough, coming out pale and grainy. Get the skillet hot, drop the meat in a few large clumps, and leave it entirely alone for three minutes so a crust can form before you break it up. The chipotle powder goes in with the meat rather than at the end, so it toasts in the fat and the smoke turns round rather than dusty.
This is a warm, smoky, slightly hot skillet with a real green backbone running through it, and the lime at the end is what makes it snap. I like it best straight from the pan with more lime, though it also goes into warm corn tortillas beautifully and stretches to feed six that way. Put it in a week that needs a green vegetable disguised as dinner rather than sitting beside dinner, since the collards here are half the volume of the pan.
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground chicken
- 2 bunches collard greens (about 1 1/4 lb), stemmed and sliced into thin ribbons
- 1 medium onion, diced small
- 1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
- 4 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 tsp ground chipotle powder
- 2 1/2 tbsp fresh lime juice, from 2 limes, plus wedges to serve
- 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil, divided
- 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
Instructions
- Strip and shred the collards: Fold each collard leaf in half along the thick central rib and cut the rib away, or hold the stem and strip the leaf off with your other hand. Stack six or eight leaves, roll them into a tight cigar, and slice across into quarter-inch ribbons. Shake the pile loose so nothing stays bundled, since a rolled clump of leaves steams from the outside in and never cooks evenly.
- Brown the chicken hard, and cook it through: Heat 1 tbsp of the olive oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium-high until it shimmers. Add the ground chicken in five or six large clumps, sprinkle with the chipotle powder and 1/4 tsp of the salt, and do not touch it for three minutes. When the underside is deep brown, break it into rough pieces and cook two minutes more, then open the thickest piece with the spatula: ground chicken is done at 165°F (74°C) with no pink left at the center, and the clumps that browned best are the ones most likely to still be raw inside. Move it to a plate.
- Sweat the onion and jalapeno: Add the remaining oil, the onion, and the jalapeno to the pan and cook three minutes over medium-high, stirring twice and scraping up the brown bits the chicken left behind. The onion should be translucent with golden edges. Stir in the garlic and cook forty five seconds, just until it smells sweet.
- Wilt the collards: Add the collard ribbons in two or three additions, tossing each batch until it collapses enough to make room for the next. Add 1/3 cup water and the rest of the salt, cover, and cook four minutes over medium-high, until the ribbons are glossy dark green and tender with a little chew left.
- Bring it back together: Take the lid off, turn the heat to high, and let any water in the bottom boil away, about a minute. Return the chicken with all its juices and toss everything for one to two minutes so the meat heats through and the greens pick up the chipotle.
- Finish with lime: Turn off the burner, pour the lime juice over the pan, and toss well. Taste a ribbon of collard and add another squeeze if it needs sharpening. Serve straight from the skillet with lime wedges on the table.
Variations
- Tacos: Spoon it into warm corn tortillas with extra lime, which turns one skillet into dinner for six.
- Sweet corn: Blister a cup of corn kernels in the dry pan before the chicken goes in and fold them back at the end for pockets of sweetness against the smoke.
- Cilantro and scallion: Scatter a big handful of chopped cilantro and sliced scallions over the finished pan for a raw green layer on top of the cooked one.
- Avocado: Fold cubes of ripe avocado in off the heat so they stay whole and cool the chile down.
- Smoky and mild: Swap the chipotle for smoked paprika and skip the jalapeno for a version with all of the smoke and none of the heat.
Storage & Leftovers
Sealed in the refrigerator this keeps four days and holds its texture better than most cooked greens, because the ribbons were pulled while they still had chew. The chipotle deepens overnight and the heat comes forward a little on the second day, so keep that in mind if you cooked it hot to begin with.
Reheat it in a skillet over medium-high for three or four minutes, spread flat at first so the chicken picks up some color again. The microwave is fine and faster, but everything comes out uniformly soft. Either way, add a fresh squeeze of lime once it is hot, since the acid fades in storage.
It freezes for up to three months in flat sealed portions and thaws better than most greens do. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator and reheat in a pan rather than from frozen so the water the collards release can cook away. A little more lime and a pinch of chipotle bring it right back.
Notes & Tips
- Roll the leaves before you slice: A tight cigar of stacked leaves gives you even ribbons in three passes of the knife. Loose leaves give you shreds of ten different widths.
- Take the ribs out: Collard stems stay tough long after the leaf is tender. They are the reason people think collards need an hour.
- Leave the chicken alone for three minutes: That crust is where the savory backbone of this dish comes from, and stirring early trades it for gray crumbs.
- Toast the chipotle on the meat: Sprinkled onto the chicken it blooms in hot fat and turns round and smoky. Added at the end it tastes like raw powder.
- Add the greens in batches: A pound and a quarter of ribbons will not fit at once. Each batch collapses in under a minute and makes room for the next.
- Boil off the water before the chicken returns: Leftover liquid in the pan will steam the crust straight off the meat. Give it a minute uncovered on high first.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- The chicken and the collards are roughly equal partners here by volume. The meat carries the protein and the browned smoky base, the greens bring the fiber and the bulk that make this a full dinner, and the lime keeps the whole pan from tasting heavy.
- Ground chicken browns into craggy pieces that hold onto spice, and it delivers a lot of protein for its weight along with niacin, selenium, and vitamin B6. The crust you build in the first three minutes is where most of its flavor ends up.
- Collard greens are a cabbage-family leaf with a firm chew that survives cooking, and they are unusually generous with calcium for a vegetable, along with vitamin K and vitamin A. Sliced into ribbons they go tender in minutes rather than hours.
- Onion, jalapeno, and garlic build the layer underneath everything. The onion goes sweet as it browns, the garlic feeds the bacteria in your gut, and the jalapeno adds a green sharpness that sits apart from the smoke of the chipotle.
- Chipotle powder toasted into the meat and lime juice added with the burner off are the two ends of this dish. The chipotle gives the smoke and a slow warmth, and the acid at the end is what makes the last forkful taste as alive as the first.
- As you eat, notice the chew the collard ribbons kept and how the smoke arrives before the heat does, and let the lime mark a pause partway down the bowl.
Frequently Asked Questions
How hot is this?
Warm rather than fierce. Chipotle powder is more smoke than fire, and the jalapeno is seeded so it contributes green flavor more than heat. For a milder pan use one teaspoon of chipotle and leave the jalapeno out. For a hotter one, leave the jalapeno seeds in.
Can I use kale or another green?
Kale works with no change, and mustard greens are excellent if you want more pepper. Both are a little more tender than collards, so start checking at three minutes rather than four. Spinach cooks too fast and turns to water here, so I would not use it.
My ground chicken came out pale and watery. Why?
The pan was crowded, not hot enough, or stirred too soon. Ground chicken releases a lot of liquid, and unless the skillet can boil that off quickly the meat sits and steams. Use a wide pan, wait for the oil to shimmer, and give it three still minutes.
Can I make this with ground turkey?
Yes, and it browns a shade darker and holds together in bigger pieces. The method does not change at all. Turkey is slightly drier, so pull it off the heat as soon as the crust is set rather than giving it the extra two minutes.