This month’s Garden & Gun has a beautifully editorial spread on collard green kimchi.

And we have a LOT of collard greens in our backyard garden.

But I didn’t feel like tracking down daikon on one of my last quiet weekends before Mardi Gras, so instead I adapted the recipe for a quick and dirty salt brine, and 10 days later, served it over Korean-inspired shredded beef in quite possibly some of the weirdest (but most delicious) tacos I’ve ever served.

This isn’t gluten free, but if you’re really inspired to make this at home and need it to not contain any wheat products, here’s a GF gojuchang recipe.

Collard Green Kimchi

(Makes one pint jar)

Gojuchang paste
7-8 ounces of collard greens, washed, trimmed from their stalks, and chopped into small pieces
6 green onions, sliced diagonally into 3/4″ pieces
Kosher or sea salt

Carefully dry the collard pieces, and place one third of them into a mixing bowl, sprinkling a generous bit of salt on top. Repeat this twice more until all of the greens are layered and salted. Place another bowl on top and add weight (we added a big can of San Marzano tomatoes to press down the smaller bowl down!)

After about an hour, the collard leaves should be tender and a fair amount of liquid should have pooled at the bottom of the bowl. Rinse the leaves slightly in a colander, and pat the pieces dry with a paper towel.

Add the semi-dry, slightly less salty collard greens to a bowl with the green onions, and add as much Gojuchang paste as you like. Massage it all together with your (hopefully clean) hands.

Pack the greens and scallions into a sterilized pint jar, seal it, and do one of two things:

-either bury it in your yard for a week (assuming you have a yard and live in the appropriate climate to do this), or
-place the jar in a cool, dark place

Leave it there for a week, and then check to see how it’s fermenting. Refrigerate when ready to use.