"Julia Altshuler" > wrote in message
. ..
>
> Most vegetables with significant crunch when raw will have more accessable
> nutrients when slightly cooked. That includes carrots, celery, cabbage,
> collards, etc. Cooking helps breaks the hard cellulose so the nutrients,
> inside the cell wall, are more available to the body. Overcooking will
> break the cell wall to the point where the vitamins leach out into the
> cooking water or evaporate, thus making the vegetable LESS nutritious than
> when you started out. Overcooking can also make the vegetables less
> useful as a non-digestible fiber source.
>
>
> That said, the proper amount of cooking time is to the level of doneness
> the individual prefers. After all, if the diner hates nearly raw
> vegetables and therefore doesn't eat them, all the nutritional value is
> gone. Same goes for limp and soggy.
>
>
> I know that slow cooking is traditional for collards, but I hate them that
> way. (It seems to me that cooking vegetables to the slime-point is
> traditional in lots of southern cooking.) I prefer them in a quick dunk
> in boiling water (less than a minute) or stir-fried. I remove the inner
> rib and just use the leaf.
>
>
> --Lia
>

To an extent, the cooking time for collards depends on the source of the
greens. Sometimes, the ones I get at the grocery store are like leather.
There's no way a quick dunk would make them pleasant to chew. The ones I
grow at home, or buy at the farmer's market have much more delicate leaves.
So, there is NO way to state a hard & fast rule.