A mixed pot of greens slow-cooked with smoked turkey until tender, the pot likker saved for sopping. The Migration's Sunday greens, bought bagged from the city store and rehabilitated with turkey over fatback.
Greens are the soul of the Black Sunday plate, North and South. In the Migration North, families bought them bagged from the city grocery rather than picking them from a garden, and the late-20th-century turn from fatback to smoked turkey was the community's own public-health correction — a way to keep the greens while fighting the hypertension the changed diet helped cause.
Dark leafy greens are among the most protective foods in the ancestral diet — vitamin K for bone and vascular health, folate, non-dairy calcium critical given high lactose intolerance, iron for the anemia that runs high in Black women, and glucosinolates for cancer prevention. The pot likker holds the water-soluble vitamins leached during cooking; drinking or sopping it recovers them. Smoked turkey delivers the smoke flavor with far less saturated fat and sodium than fatback.
Simmer smoked turkey necks or wings in water to build a smoky broth, add washed and stemmed mixed greens, smother on low 45-60 minutes until tender. Finish with vinegar or hot sauce. Always save and serve the pot likker.
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