- Leaf lettuce
- Onions
- Hot grease
- Salt and pepper
Each Spring I look forward to the first kilt lettuce of the season. Various names are used for the traditional Appalachian dish: killed lettuce, kill lettuce, wilted lettuce, lettuce and onions, killed salad, or the word “kilt” used here. Kilt lettuce should be served immediately after making. The dish uses fresh leaf lettuce from the garden or branch lettuce that grows wild along the creek. The way Granny taught me was to begin by picking and washing leaves of lettuce, making sure to dry off as much water as possible. Sometimes I wash mine early in the morning and leave it drying on a towel in the fridge. Cut up several green onions, including tops, and mix with torn lettuce in a bowl, adding salt and pepper to taste. Pour hot bacon or streaked meat (salt pork) grease over mixture. Be prepared for lots of hissing and popping when the grease hits the lettuce. Toss and serve quickly. It doesn’t take much grease; a little goes a long way.
Tip: Kilt Lettuce goes wonderfully with cornbread and soup beans.
TP
—Celebrating Southern Appalachian Food written by Jim Casada and Tipper Pressley.
I hope to have our first mess of kilt lettuce this week. The lettuce and onions are ready and waiting in the garden.
If you don’t have leaf lettuce other greens work in the recipe too.
Miss Cindy’s family made kilt lettuce slightly different than we do. She said her Dad taught her to make it like this:
“Cook a few slices of bacon and crumble it in a bowl on top of the torn lettuce and cut green onions (cut onions including the tops). Add salt and pepper. Heat the remaining bacon grease and pour it on the greens then add vinegar or lemon juice to the hot pan and swirl it then pour it on the greens. Toss the bowl contents to mix and eat immediately…with cornbread. The lettuce is so fragile that it doesn’t take much grease to wilt it and the lemon/vinegar is hot so it helps to wilt it as well.”
You can find a copy of Celebrating Southern Appalachian Food here.
Last night’s video: Filling Beds with Compost.
Tipper
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox
Oh Tipper thats some good eating !! I haven’t had lettuce and onions with meat grease since I was a kid. we grew it in the baccer plant bed under the canvas . so so good . Not sure my tummy could handle it now.
Yall eat alot of the things we did and do. love your channel.
Oh my goodness, sure would love some fresh garden lettuce. In our very small garden we didn’t plant it. I sometimes buy Bib Lettuce and make what we always knew as “Wilted Lettuce.” It tastes really good, but nothing like my momma made from the garden lettuce daddy planted and grew. Y’all enjoy it and think of all us that didn’t get it out of our own gardens. God bless everyone and all the Acorns, today, tomorrow and always.
I’ve got a WOW but I wasn’t sure where to leave it. I heard this years ago, maybe in college and I’ve never forgotten it for long. I dressed it up a bit, to match MY personality and to give credit to Jesus.
“When life suddenly goes in a direction you didn’t expect, instead of lettin’ it bind you up just yell, PLOT TWIST and and let the Lord turn the page.”
Thank you!
I picked Black-seeded Simpson lettuce this morning. Mine is trying to bolt already so is not going to be around much longer. I’ve given away far more that we have used for ourselves. Gave our pastor a bag of lettuce and he was planning on having the “wilted” lettuce version. Truth is, I plant lettuce and radishes because I can count on them to produce earlier than anything. I have to eat the radishes myself or give them away.
Some of my family often added sliced radishes to theirs.
What a wonderful saying!
Need to remember that and use it
hey Tipper, We have a slight variation of this as well. We cook the onions along with the grease/bacon and then turn off the heat and add the greens (spinach is my favorite)on top give it a quick stir in the pan. No vinegar just some salt and pepper. Some of the best eating of spring.
Tipper, that sounds amazing! Momma made greasy greens just like this and sometimes like Miss Cindy. I guess it depended on what she felt like at the moment.
I have been trying to catch up on your videos, but I’m behind. Everything looks wonderful! God bless!
We worked outside the majority of the day yesterday. It felt so good! It was a beautiful spring day, but today we are supposed to get rain the majority of the day. I am itching to plant things but know I need to wait until the danger of frost/freezing is fully behind us. I did plant a large bed that is almost fully shade with wildflowers that so well in the shade yesterday. They always seem to do fine if I plant them in April. I am praying you will be safe in the storms today, Kim. We also had some morning rain which was very comforting to listen to from bed, along with the gentle music of the wind chimes.
Nothing better than killed lettuce, pinto beans and cornbread. A feast indeed
My grandma taught me to fix kilt lettuce the same way as you and Granny. Delicious! Miss Cindy’s recipe sounds interesting too. I may give it a try when my lettuce starts coming in really good.
I love wilted lettuce!! My mom and grandma made it Miss Cindy’s way and so, of course, do I. I got green onions that I planted in March but sadly my lettuce and mixed greens did grow.
I did something this morning that I haven’t done in years! Slept in til nearly 9!! I woke up early (4:45) and thought, nope! Willed myself back to sleep. Woke up to lots of thunder and lightening before 8 and the magnificent thunderstorm lulled me back to sleep. Round 2 has just started. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen water standing in the field this deep, south of me. The drought has had a hold of us here in central IL for a long time. While I’m enjoying this rain I’m horribly fearful of the weather that’s predicted for all of central IL this afternoon. Prayers for all who are in the paths of these storms and tornadoes.
Praying for you, Kim. We are in Indiana and they’re giving the same weather for us. I hate the way these storms are rolling in lately. Very fierce and fiery.
My kids love baby spinach or swiss chard put to the same treatment. It is good!
Upstate NY has a “sauteed greens” dish made from escarole, but otherwise it’s on the same principle, with the addition of hot peppers and plenty of grated cheese. Since it’s based on an old Italian recipe, there’s also Italian-style breadcrumbs, and the bacon fat that’s used comes from pancetta (non-smoked bacon). Another version of kilt lettuce that I’ve had is with frisée lettuce (which I used to hear called “frizzy lettuce,” which is a misnomer because it’s chicory).
Wanting to do something for “B”has been bothering me ever since I read about the diagnosis for her. Would it be acceptable to send cards or something to her by any member that wanted too if we had her address? I dearly love all children and can’t image her family having to deal with this.
Randy, I have her address and they also have a ‘go fund me’ to help with costs if anyone would like to do that.
If you want to send a card by mail I’ll share her address tomorrow.
The go fund me link is below if I copied it correctly. There should be a picture of B in her pink ball cap. The page should say Support Blakely’s fight against DIPG.
https://gofund.me/0d4286415
A great dish. At Tater Knob a little vinegar was added with bacon drippings. Served with hot hoe cake it was a spring favorite.
My lettuce is not ready yet, so when my craving set in, I bought a bundle of leaf lettuce from Kroger and pretended it was homegrown. For all the folks who have never tried kilt lettuce and onions, it is better than any of those fancy million-dollar recipes I keep trying from various sites. It’s the most unique-tasting dish that doesn’t taste a thing like lettuce eaten on a sandwich or a garden salad. Mom would say, ” It ain’t no count unlesson you eat it with cornbread, soup beans, and fried taters.”
Until reading this post I did not realize you used only hot grease—my family added just a smidge of vinegar and even smaller smidgen of sugar to the vinegar (slightly cut the vinegar taste without making it sweet)….but however anyone makes it there is no denying it is some good stuff.
My Mom made it like Miss Cindy. I really liked it. Mom always grew all the salad fixings in the garden. Except for the bacon. I never knew any other way of eating fresh greens than wilted lettuce until I left home. Mom called it wilted lettuce. I remember pulling onions and cutting off the lettuce. We made our peanut butter and lettuce sandwiches with the garden lettuce too. Our after school snack.
We called it scalded lettuce when I was growing up. Same recipe though. I wouldn’t eat it but I watched it being made. Is scalded lettuce something my parents made up? Or am I just the only one left that remembers it?
My mom made what she called wilted lettuce and potatoes. She made it just like Miss Cindy did sans the lemon juice but she added boiled drained hot potato cubes just before adding the grease to the lettuce. IT WAS SO GOOD.
This is one Appalachian dish I have never learned to love; I’m not a fan of vinegar. My mom always loved it, though; she grew black-seeded Simpson lettuce to make it every year.
Kilt lettuce sounds like a spring tonic-so to speak. I’m sure it would give the plumbing of the body a great workout while cleaning out the pipes (so to speak.) I know after a good clean out, arthritis pain and the puny way I feel goes away for awhile. I heard we are supposed to have another cold snap and I for one am sick, sick, sick of cold and snow. I’m terrified to plant stuff and watch it just freeze and die. I guess after May 5 or so it’s as good as it’s gonna get here. I’m chiggered up over here and itching it up… nothing thrives except pests and weeds… everything else you gotta fight to keep going outdoors. Every day I swear I see a new and different insect. I saw one I’ll just call a rattlesnake wasp. It had the colors of a dang rattlesnake…smh….
Good morning Tipper, I remember my grandmother making this except she used curly leave mustard greens. I’ve never had it using lettuce but I sure looked forward to having it every spring with the mustard greens.
good morning, my grandma used to fix something like that when I was a child, it grew wild in the pasture, she mix onions and bacon grease with it, I miss my grandma, I haven’t shaf any since, once again I’d like to thank you for praying for my brother, he is in the arms of Jesus, he is permanently healed now, praise God, thank you for praying for my brother
Good morning Tipper and Acorns. We had Kilt Lettice this past weekend. I used a plastic container of mixed spring greens and a head of romaine that was in the fridge. I turned it into the soup that Tipper made that she called their New Favorite Soup, so I call it Kilt Lettuce Soup. It is good, but my fav is the Cabbage patch Stew. The grocery store stuff is pretty good but nothing is better than home grown. I’ve made it both ways but Mama always made it in the skillet. I sure enjoyed watching y’all top off all your garden beds. I still can’t get over what a great deal you got on that load of mix. I just have to Say Praise GOD this morning. I woke up and checked for my e-mails while washing my bed clothes and had an e-mail from my GoFundMe for my son, Ed (Charles Edward Dyson). There have been many donations and there will be enough right now to pay 2 of the Doctors fees from the hospital stay with a little left over to buy most of next month’s medications. I Praise GOD for all the caring people in this world. I keep everyone here and up Wilson Holler in my prayers. I love y’all.
I didn’t get my lettuce planted so far this year. Kilt lettuce would sure taste good about now. Maybe this week I can get some leaf lettuce planted.
We love wilted lettuce here, so I’m going to have to try using the romaine lettuce I have in the fridge and see how it will turn out. Our garden area is getting a rest this year, so I definitely miss the fresh produce, but next year, our garden should do well. We have a cover crop growing on it right now, then we plan to cut it down later in May and add compost on top of that then cover it with a garden cover for the remaining season.
Im gonna try this one day. We have taken long trips during the Spring these last 2 years, so I’m missing many things associated with Spring. Next year will be different as we will be home in the spring months. I have enjoyed seeing the midwest during Spring, but could do without all the storms. We made it to Minnesota last week and are now traveling back down through Iowa.
Tipper, the size of these fields and gardens would blow your mind!!
Mama used to grow leaf lettuce early in the spring. She dug up a little strip of ground beside the garage, planted the lettuce, and used an old window to cover it. After it came up she picked the tender leaves, washed and dried them, added some spring onions and bacon bits then poured hot bacon grease over top the mixture. It was served immediately. We usually had “wilted lettuce” with soup beans, cornbread, and fried potatoes. It was so good.
That sounds so good!