Why You Should Try 'Killing' Your Next Salad

Eating leafy greens is an essential part of a healthy diet, for vitamins, minerals, and fiber — they can help reduce the risk of obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, and even prevent mental decline (per Healthline). You can eat your greens in a salad, where they can be dressed (in oh-so-many wonderful different dressings), massaged, and salted. You can even take leftover salad and blend it into a soup, put it into a grilled cheese, or turn it into a kuku (an Iranian frittata), per Edible Brooklyn.

Other ways to use tougher greens involve stir-frying (like this classic bok choy recipe to whip up in a wok), steaming (which you can mix up by nestling an egg into a bed of steamed greens), or simply just eating them raw. Whatever your favorite way to prepare leafy greens, perhaps it's time to kill your darlings and to try killing your salad.

A killed salad, which goes by other names like kilt salad, wilted salad, or smothered salad, is a classic side dish popular in the Appalachian region, according to Cook's Country. It's a simple dish to prepare that just takes hot pork fat to make. All you have to do is pour the grease over freshly torn lettuce (or any type of hardy greens, like romaine or escarole) and some chopped onions to lightly wilt and warm the greens. To really make the killed salad shine, Cook's Country recommends adding a bit of sugar and acidity, like apple cider vinegar, to lighten up the heaviness of the dish.

To try killing your own salad, Delishably has a recipe pulled from the author's youth in Kentucky. If you're not sure where to get pork fat, just use leftover bacon grease from a big breakfast – storing bacon fat for a rainy kilt greens day is fairly simple to achieve.