- [Speaker] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- [Speaker] The following episode of "Charlotte Cooks" is brought to you by Central Piedmont Community College and viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Coming up on the next episode of "Charlotte Cooks", we have the Carolina Classic Contest winner, and we are gonna be making some collared greens and some cornbread.

(upbeat music) Welcome to this edition to "Charlotte Cooks".

I'm very excited about sharing this episode with you today.

We have the winner of the Carolina Classic Cook Off.

- [Dominic] All right, you're on.

(upbeat music) My name is Dominic Hawks and I'm the Culinary Arts Instructor at Lancaster County School District Career Center.

I've been the Culinary Arts Instructor for four years.

My genius art teacher wife actually saw the link and she said, "Hey, why don't you sign up for this competition?"

I was like, "Well, I don't know if I have time.

Let me see."

And when I looked at it, I was like, well, they're asking for some videos.

So it was actually a video that I made during the pandemic because my students, they all had to go home as we all did for months on end.

And so how can I get my students to carry on doing things?

Well, so I started making videos on my YouTube channel.

Just by having that whole library of different videos that I have now, I thought, what a perfect thing to have?

We had the color greens that had the real Southern flare to them.

And so that's why I entered in and worked out fantastically.

So we're gonna go just on the leg side of that line of fat.

In the Career Center here, I'm working as a culinary arts instructor.

It's amazing because I get to take those students who some of them literally have no experience at all in the kitchen.

Some of them even tell me that their mothers won't let them in the kitchen and we are we're like, okay, let's change that then.

Let's give you the skills and the knowledge to get it to where you're at least safe in the kitchen, but maybe we can make something big happen.

- I enjoy this class a lot.

I've learned a lot.

I've made a lot of friends and I just enjoy, especially my teacher.

Thank you, Chef Hawks.

- Don't be scared of it.

It's all good.

- He's always open, friendly.

He's always shown us how to do things the right way, make sure we're doing it right, safely.

He's really, really good at what he does.

- [Dominic] I'm very lucky that the program we already have is a very strong one.

We now have the ability for students to get up to five certifications.

Our students will go with letters after their name.

They'll have the CFC certification, the Certified Fundamentals Cook and this is just the start, but they start ahead of everyone else now because they already have that first level down.

- This class, it is a rather interesting class.

You can come in, you learn all types of recipes, all types of new tricks.

And he's an interesting fellow.

One of the best chefs I've come across so far, and that is really pleasing.

He's really passionate in what he does.

- [Dominic] I really encourage our students to bring their own family's heritage to the classroom as well.

I get to really get to know the students, which is great 'cause I get to know them and their families on a more personal note.

And so, we literally have them delve back into their family heritage then we can make our course more relevant to those students so they can actually look at their background, we can start researching some methods and recipes that may be from their family heritage or even better is when they bring me a recipe.

(air whooshes) - [Charlotte] Into PBS Charlotte's Carolina Classic Cook Off.

- [Dominic] I was staggered.

I had no idea that it's just little old me throwing out this recipe that I did during the pandemic.

And I didn't think that anything big would come of it, and I was amazed when it was picked.

I was pleasantly surprised and my family was like, "Wow, really Dad?

No kidding."

And I've had lots of people on while.

I know a lot of other culinary teachers on Facebook and everywhere else and all over the state in South Carolina and up into North Carolina and then across the country, just like, wow, this is great, can't wait to see it.

So there, yeah, everyone's very excited about it.

(air whooshes) - Well, Dominic, welcome to the show.

How are you doing?

- Fantastic.

Thank you.

- Good.

- It's great to be here.

- It was really kind of fun to see your video and get you all involved in this.

So what are we making today?

We're doing something classic.

- So we have some collared greens.

We're gonna be cooking those Carolina style and we're also going to make some cornbread.

It's a jalapeno cheddar cornbread.

- What kind of things do we need to get started?

I think the collared greens, how long do they take to cook?

- They're going to take about an hour because we want them to be nice and tender.

So they're gonna take the longest.

And then we're going to have some other ingredients, onions and some bacon and ham, which always season it up nicely.

They're going to be in the pan first.

- We were talking about doing bacon and ham and you already have these cut and diced.

This is a different kind of bacon that you have here.

What do you have here?

- So this I had my team actually work on.

This is a natural bacon instead of using sodium nitrate, which is not necessarily the best for us.

So we actually put together this bacon where we just used natural salt and sugar and then some other flavoring ingredients, things like pepper that just add that nice flavor in there.

- That's why it's not pink.

- Exactly.

It doesn't show up bright and pink.

It cooks down exactly the same way and it tastes fantastic as well, but it's all natural that way.

- [Charlotte] So this is what you wanna do, is chop it up, right?

- [Dominic] Exactly.

Yes.

- [Charlotte] And what else are we gonna put in here today?

- [Dominic] So we're going to have some ham as well.

And so, we have some of that diced up.

You can, if you have the option to actually use the ham bone in there as well.

That just gives extra flavor in there as well.

And then we also have some ham hocks that we can add in there as well, which are fantastic because they just infuse so much flavor.

- They sure do.

Not only do you get the flavor from the meat, but you also got the flavor coming outta the bones.

You could choose to take the meat out of this or you could just throw the whole thing in the pot, right?

- Exactly.

- Yeah.

That's fabulous.

Now, if you didn't eat pork, there's also another option.

- We also have some turkey wings.

These go down really nicely as well.

They've got, especially if you roasted them up first, caramelizes them up and gives it a lot of flavor in there.

And in fact, back in my youth, my mother, when she would make collard greens, generally she wouldn't be using pork products in there.

She would prefer to use whatever she was roasting at the time.

So if we had a leg of lamb or if we had a turkey or a chicken roasting on a Sunday, she would just take some of the drippings, pour those in and add that in there just to infuse the flavors in there.

- Now I know that there's a lot of vegetarians out there too that don't use pork or turkey or any meat or anything like that.

Is this essential?

Can we leave this out?

- We can absolutely leave that out.

- That's great to know.

- The wonderful flavors and aromas we get from all the different vegetables that we have around always work well with this.

- They really do.

Okay, so how are we gonna get started on this?

Do we need to prep the collards or do we just need to start rendering?

What do we need to do?

- We can start off prepping up some of the collards.

- [Charlotte] Okay.

- We could actually have some of that bacon slowly, gently rendering down.

- [Charlotte] Let's do that.

- Because we're not going to add any fat in there 'cause there's enough with the bacon.

Just gently heating it through on a medium heat will actually start to, as you say, render some of that fat out that works then well with the onions adding in after that.

- That sounds fabulous.

What kind of heat do you want?

- Just a medium heat will be perfect.

- A medium heat, okay.

If you weren't using any of the bacon or something that's gonna render fat, you'd use vegetable oil or butter.

- Exactly.

- Probably not butter, but vegetable oil.

- Right.

And you could use some clarified butter if you wanted to, but you certainly don't want to burn which regular solid butter would start to burn just because we're going to be cooking this for probably a good 10 minutes like this to start cooking down the bacon, then starting to caramelize up those onions.

So, yes, we don't want any burning to happen.

- Your mother didn't use pork products.

- No.

It just wasn't something that she would normally associate with collard greens.

And it was rare in our household that we'd have maybe a ham or something like that.

Anyway, not that we had anything against bacon or pork.

Very often we'd have pork chops on Tuesdays.

It was actually a pork chop day.

- Right.

- But with collard greens, I guess from her upbringing, that's what she associated, was what generally she would be roasting for the Sunday roast.

- I think it's really fascinating that you're from England and my mother's from Nova Scotia and we had collared greens all the time.

You had collard greens all the time.

- Absolutely.

Every Sunday.

- And yet when people think about collard greens, they always associate it with Southern African American food.

But it is one of those universal vegetables that you find just about everywhere.

It grows just about everywhere.

- It does.

- My great-grandmother planted a patch of collared greens and they're still picking from it today.

- That's awesome.

- It's fantastic.

It's really fantastic.

It's like heirloom collared greens.

- Exactly.

- But this is up in Canada, so it does happen to be one of those universal foods and you don't always have to boil collard greens either.

You can always take them, use them as a wrap.

- Absolutely.

- Have you seen that?

- Oh, yes.

- Oh, those are fun.

Those are a lot of fun.

- They really are.

- You put all kinds of vegetables in there.

Vegetarians really like that a lot.

Instead of using a burrito or something, use a collared leaf.

And it's delicious.

- It's really delicious.

The trick is keeping everything all together.

- And the nutritional value that we have in here as well is fantastic as well.

- Absolutely.

- Smooth great fiber in there, iron, calcium.

Things that people can be deficient in, but you can enjoy this all as part of a great meal.

- My grandfather used to always say, "When you eat greens, you're eating gold."

- Mm hmm.

Absolutely.

- It was like, it's the best thing you could put in your body.

Okay, so we have this rendering, what are we gonna do to get our collards ready?

- When you take your collards, definitely something that's really important to do is to wash them.

- Absolutely wash them.

And if you're done washing them, I'd wash them again just in case.

- Yes, absolutely.

They tend to be grown a lot.

Especially when you're buying them from the store, they tend to be grown in a sandy kind of conditions.

- [Charlotte] Absolutely.

- You want good drainage on the roots, but the problem there is that you end up with sand all the way through them.

So always wash really well.

I use most of the actual leaves themselves down.

Most of the stems, in fact, are perfectly edible 'cause they're gonna cook for a good long period of time.

And there's lots of goodness down there.

I just trim off the base where it can be a little more fibrous.

And then I take the rest of the leaf and I'll just make a couple of incisions going across here and then I'll just start slicing some nice, relatively thick pieces.

- [Charlotte] Yeah, 'cause they're gonna cook.

You don't want them to disappear.

- Exactly.

- And spinach, when you put spinach in water, it just totally turns to nothing.

Collards don't turn to nothing, but they do wilt up still and you don't want them to be cut so fine that they just get really mushy.

- Exactly.

- You want them to stay nice and so you can put them on a fork and put them in your mouth with a hunk of ham on there.

It's really good when you get the little ham and the bacon going with them.

- [Dominic] Exactly.

Well, they can almost be a meal on themselves when they're as hearty as these.

- Your bacon smells fabulous.

- It really does come up nicely.

And just knowing that you don't have any of those artificial chemicals or- - Nitrites and nitrates.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- It's just good to be able to have something that's a little more wholesome.

The only downside is it won't keep quite as long because we're not chemically preserving.

- [Charlotte] It's not preserving, yeah.

- But it's just the salt that's curing it basically.

But even still, you can freeze it.

There's nothing wrong with freezing bacon, and so you can keep it for a relatively long period of time.

But the flavor of it is just fantastic.

The onions in.

Start stirring these in.

- [Charlotte] So how many onions is that?

Is that like one big onion, or- - So this is one big onion.

Yes.

So if you only find smaller onions in the store, then a couple will be good.

The recipe, as with a lot of recipes that aren't necessarily baking and pastry recipes, it doesn't have to be precise.

If you don't like quite so much onions in there, then you can go lower.

If you love the onions, you can go more.

- Add more.

- And if you don't like onions, you can leave them out?

- You can leave them out entirely.

- But that's a lot of flavor you're leaving out too.

- It is.

And it's not going to be onion flavored collard greens.

It's just about adding layers.

- [Charlotte] Exactly.

That's what I try to teach students here when you're seasoning.

It's not just salt.

It's everything else that goes on to it.

- Absolutely.

- You can also get flavors from your cooking processes.

- [Dominic] Absolutely, yes.

- [Charlotte] Which is like when you get the golden brown on the bottom of the pan, that were fond of fond, aren't we?

- [Dominic] Exactly.

Lots of flavor.

- [Charlotte] That's that lovely brown stuff that happens on the bottom of the pan.

Caramelizing means turning the sugar is brown basically.

You think of caramel, it's sugar that's been browned.

And so that's what we're doing, is we're taking the sugars in these items and we're caramelizing it on the bottom and we call it fond of fond.

- Exactly.

- Because it is so delicious.

- It is.

- So how we're gonna get that up off the bottom?

- So we're actually going to use some stock that we're going to add into there.

- And this is stock that you guys made.

- This is a chicken stock.

And so this one actually took about 12 hours to make this one.

So that we add things like mirepoix, which is carrots, onions and celery along with the chicken bones that we make from actually breaking down whole chickens.

- [Charlotte] Sure.

- And we roast up the chicken bones to again add the flavor, the same kind of flavor we have there.

Exactly, and then that just gently simmers away with a bouquet garni or a sashi de piece, which is just a little bit herbs or spice bundled up there.

But, yes, now this, this is perfect.

We can just add some of this in and (pot sizzling) you hear it bubbling away and that's just going to draw all of that flavor right out.

- [Charlotte] Just enough to get the liquid on the bottom of that pot.

So it starts releasing all of that beautiful fond.

- And we can go in with our ham.

- [Charlotte] Okay.

So the ham is just cooked ham that you've just diced.

- Exactly, yes.

Nice and simple.

If you have ham on the bone, then that can be- - Like the ham hocks.

- Exactly.

- Toss it right in.

- Those can go in there as well.

And then which guys literally just stir these in.

I think the greens are ready to jump on it.

- Alright.

- So, yes.

Let's see if I can get them in without shedding them all over.

- Right.

(Dominic laughing) I know.

They look like they take up a lot of space, but then as soon as they hit the heat, they all wilt down.

- [Dominic] Exactly.

- [Charlotte] And turn into a little spoonful of greens and you go, hmm, I could have used more.

(Dominic laughing) - [Dominic] Yes.

- [Charlotte] This is about what?

Four pounds.

- [Dominic] Yes, exactly, yes.

- [Charlotte] Okay.

So that's a lot.

- [Dominic] It is.

- [Charlotte] That's a lot.

- This will definitely be enough for the family.

That's for sure.

- I always find it amazing when you bring the collards home and try to put them in the fridge.

They don't look that big until you try to put them in your fridge and then they fill up your refrigerator.

- The fridge suddenly gets very small.

- It's very small.

- Yes (laughing).

We'll just give them a couple of minutes and we'll start stirring them up and mixing in all the wonderful flavors that we have and they'll start breaking down.

And the great thing is with collards, because I'll eat collards every day if I could, but I don't necessarily want to spend an hour every day cooking them plus prep time but they freeze down just fine.

Once they're cooked down, they freeze down just fine as well.

- Absolutely.

- [Charlotte] Those are cooked down quite a bit.

So is it time to add the stock now?

- Yes.

I think we're good to add the stock in now.

- Alright.

- I'm going to put most of this in, so we'll probably need the vast majority of it, but I normally hold back a tiny bit and I do have some water on the side here as well in case if we do need that.

These are gonna cook for an hour.

I'm not gonna have them boil for an hour, just simmering gently for an hour.

But obviously we're going to reduce down the liquid.

- [Charlotte] Right.

- That's in there.

We don't want them to be completely swampy, we want them just to have that nice liquor at the bottom there that we'll enjoy with our cornbread, but we don't want them to go dry to where they're not nice and evenly cooking as well.

- And we don't want them to be completely swimming in there either.

- Exactly.

- We just wanted to have enough liquid to moisten them, keep them simmering.

And so, this is gonna be our backup units in case that liquid evaporates enough to where we need to add more.

- Correct.

Yes, exactly.

We'll add a little garlic in here now.

- [Charlotte] Just you're using just garlic powder?

- [Dominic] Just garlic powder will be fine.

It's not to make the collard greens garlic flavor.

It's just another layer of- - Add garlic.

Now you could use fresh garlic too, right?

- Absolutely, yes.

If you did, I would add that a little sooner just so- - [Charlotte] Just so you get a little saute.

- Exactly, yeah.

Just- - [Charlotte] Before we added any of the stock, yeah.

- [Dominic] Otherwise, it'll be just floating around on the top there.

- And you do have to be careful when you add garlic.

Don't ever add it when you add your onions because it's just gonna burn.

Just before you add your liquid, you could throw your fresh garlic in then.

Put it on a micro plane.

I love a micro plane.

Don't you?

- [Dominic] Absolutely.

Yes.

- [Charlotte] So now we're gonna bring that back to a boil and then we're gonna turn it down to a simmer, right?

- [Dominic] Absolutely, yes.

- All right, I'm going move this out of our way and we're gonna get started on that cornbread you mentioned.

I'm gonna pass you the bowls because we do a process for cornbread, right?

- Exactly.

In the industry, it's known as the biscuit method.

Now we're going to have separated out our wet ingredients and our dry ingredients.

- [Charlotte] All right.

- And we do this because when we're wanting to mix up the wet ingredients, if we have the dry, which includes some wheat flour, that's going to actually start moving it around and the gluten that's in the wheat flour will develop and make everything tight.

- That's one of the reasons you don't mix cornbread too much.

- Exactly.

- Just bring it together.

- Oh, yeah.

- So you guys got to watch this because there is a trick.

If you over mix it, you're going to have corn cake.

- Exactly.

- So we're gonna start with eggs.

- So, yes.

So our wet ingredients.

So I'll take eggs and we can just break them up a little, thank you so much.

And we're not looking to whip a bunch of air into here.

It's literally just breaking them up because we actually have an ingredient that's going to give us the air, our baking powder.

- [Charlotte] Mm hmm.

- And then I'll take our butter.

So our butter has just been melted.

- [Charlotte] This is just two sticks of butter.

- Exactly.

And then I'll take our buttermilk.

- [Charlotte] Two cups of buttermilk.

- [Dominic] Exactly.

- [Charlotte] Buttermilk is magic.

- [Dominic] And that's another seasoning as we talk about in the industry where we want to add a certain level of acidity, especially with the fat content we have in there.

And that just helps to season everything up a little more.

You can taste it even better.

All right, so we've got our wet ingredients together.

- Okay.

- Now we can put our dry.

- I'll take that outta your way right now.

- Thanks so much.

- Here's a bowl for your dry ingredients.

- Great.

- And so we've got the, wouldn't be cornbread without corn meal.

- [Charlotte] Can you use white corn meal?

- You definitely can.

Yes.

- [Charlotte] Can you use blue corn meal?

- [Dominic] Yes, you can.

Yes.

- [Charlotte] You can use any kind of corn meal you want.

- Absolutely.

So I added in our leavening agent there.

That was the baking powder.

And now I've got our salts, sprinkle a little salt in there and sugar.

The sugar is just another ingredient that helps to make it a little softer, as well as having the fat in there when you have sugar in any kind of a bread.

It helps to make it a softer type of a product.

And in fact, this cornbread is different than some corn breads where we do have the wheat flour in there that gives it that softer texture.

So if you don't prefer the type of cornbread that can be kind of crumbling and breaks up, if you prefer it to be a little softer in its nature, this is a great recipe to use.

- So in your dry ingredients, you've got corn meal, flour, baking powder, salt.

What else?

Sugar.

- Oh, and sugar.

Yes.

- Sugar.

- Yes.

- Okay.

And then in your wet ingredients, you've got eggs, you've got melted butter, you've got- - And the buttermilk.

- And the buttermilk?

Okay.

So what's the next step?

- So this way we can combine everything in their separate places first of all.

So we have all of the leavening agent, the salt and everything else in here and all the liquid ingredients mixed.

So that way, when we add them both together, it doesn't take much to mix them together.

- And you don't have to over mix it.

- Last thing I'm going to do, I'm going to actually add into here the cheese, the jalapenos and the green onions.

Just add those in literally just to combine them a little and then all the wet ingredients and then literally just a few stirs and that's it.

- One of the reasons we wanna mix these things in with our flour is when it's mixed in with the liquids, it's gonna prevent it from sinking all the way down to the bottom.

And sometimes like, if you're making muffins and things, if you don't put your berries in some flour, they sink to the bottom.

- [Dominic] Exactly.

- [Charlotte] And this way we can keep the ingredients distributed evenly throughout the entire cornbread mix.

- Exactly.

Yeah, there's nothing worse than Christmas when you're making one of those wonderful fruit cakes and- - [Charlotte] All the fruit comes out the bottom.

(both laughing) - [Charlotte] That's the way you mount it.

It's layered.

It's layered.

You ready for these yet?

- Yes.

Yep, we can come right on in.

- You want me to pour it in?

- That'll be great.

Thank you.

- Okay.

We're mixing the liquids with the drys.

- [Dominic] And it'll only take a few stirs as you can see.

It's starting to come together really nicely.

Now we don't have to keep on stirring this until every single bit of flower has gone.

In fact, if there's a few little dry patches just left just at the end, it's okay.

Just let it be.

And so I'm literally just scooping it from underneath to maximize every one of those scoops.

I think we're about a little on the bottom here.

Let me just get that last little bit.

And I think we'll be about there.

- Now, if you didn't wanna add cheddar or jalapenos to it, you wouldn't have to, and you could actually add kernel corn to it.

If you get fresh corn, cut it off or even frozen corn.

- Absolutely.

Oh, yeah.

- Those are really good in there too.

- Yeah.

And you can add any kind of cheese that you'd prefer in there if you want to.

- [Charlotte] Absolutely.

- Or just completely no cheese at all.

And really cornbread takes on.

You can add in sweet peppers, onions, if you want.

There's all sorts of things.

- [Charlotte] You can do a lot with cornbread.

- Absolutely.

- And so we're going to cook our cornbread in a cast iron skillet.

You don't have to use a cast iron skillet, but we like cast iron because it gets hot and it distributes the heat evenly.

- Right.

- And that's what they used to do back in the olden days.

- Exactly.

And it can give a nice crust at the edge of it as well.

- [Charlotte] It does.

It really gives a beautiful crust on the bottom and the sides.

Get a good seasoned cast iron skillet there, so you don't have to worry about anything sticking in it.

- Exactly.

Oh, it's great.

I love cast iron and they in fact say that it's good for your health as well 'cause a small amount of iron can be imparted into your food as well.

- Absolutely.

This looks like it's ready to go in the oven, but you have one more thing.

- Yes.

So we just held back a little bit of the cheddar and we're going to sprinkle out on top.

It just helps to kind of glaze over on top as it's starting to bake.

- [Charlotte] So now we're gonna set our oven.

It's already preheated to 350 degrees.

We're gonna pop that in there.

How long is that gonna take to cook?

- It's gonna take 15, 20 minutes somewhere around there.

We'll be able to check it when it comes out just to make sure 'cause different size pans at home may yield different finishing times.

- Dominic our collards look like they're done.

- Yep.

They're looking great now.

- They look fantastic.

- As with everything that we make, we want to season it.

And so with collard greens, we think about it at the moment.

We have a lot of fatty bacon in there.

So to cut through that bacon, we're going to add in some vinegar.

- Okay.

- So I have a white distilled vinegar.

So with the white distilled vinegar, I choose to use this for this particular dish because I'm not looking to add any more flavors that could interrupt what we have there, just to add that acidity to be able to basically make it so we can taste it better.

- [Charlotte] Yeah.

- But you could put apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, if you want.

But just remember when you do that, you are changing the flavor.

- [Charlotte] The flavors change.

Yes.

- And then we're going to want a salt and pepper, the one thing with this because we have so much pork product in there that was cured with salt beforehand, which you need to be careful not to add too much salt.

So little bit of salt, taste it, but the pepper is always great in there as well.

- Right.

Something to remember when you're cooking at home guys is when you add salt, salt concentrates as you cook.

And so when you have something like the collards that are simmering for so long, you wanna make sure you're not having too much salt in there because it will turn out to be a salt bomb.

- And now these are just about done.

They're ready for us to go.

- Looks so great.

Are we ready to check the cornbread?

- I think we should.

- All right.

- We can take just a small object, like a sharp knife or a toothpick and just press that in there.

And as you press in, when you pull out, if that comes out nice and clean, then we're good to go.

If you still see some wet mixture on there, that means it needs a little bit longer.

So- - [Charlotte] It looks like it's good.

Oh my goodness.

Look at that.

- [Dominic] So and hopefully we should be able to, first piece is always the hardest obviously, but- - [Charlotte] It's always the hardest to get out, isn't it?

- Yes.

We have a nice piece of our cornbread.

- Oh, look at it.

Yeah.

- I'm sure there someone else who might want a piece.

We can cut a couple of pieces out here.

- [Charlotte] So some people would serve it right there in the skillet.

- [Dominic] Absolutely.

Yes.

- [Charlotte] Why not?

- [Dominic] It's a nice presentation that you have with the cornbread.

The skillets always just looks so pretty.

- They do.

And look, it comes right out too.

- It does.

- [Charlotte] That's the secret to having a good seasoned cast iron pan.

- [Dominic] Exactly.

- Are these ready to serve now?

- Yes.

So, yep, we're good to go.

In fact, we can probably turn our collards off now and they're good to go to be able to serve up.

- [Charlotte] We have a plate here that's made up with everything that you could possibly serve with some collards.

We've got some roasted chicken, we've got some beans and rice, we've got the mac and cheese.

Now we're gonna put some collards in this bowl 'cause you gotta have collards.

And then we're gonna put a piece of cornbread on the side.

You wanna cut me another piece of cornbread?

- Absolutely.

- [Charlotte] And you don't wanna squeeze them dry when you put them in your bowl.

You wanna go ahead and get some of that beautiful pot liquor on there?

- [Dominic] I was always brought up with gravy and that's just like a extra flavored gravy.

- [Charlotte] Absolutely, it's an extra flavored gravy.

So Dominic, thank you so much for bringing your Carolina Classic recipe to our show.

We've really enjoyed having you on.

This looks so delicious.

I can't wait to get a fork and dive in.

Thank you so much for watching this episode of "Charlotte Cooks".

And if you wanna grab these recipes, send me an email and I'll send you a link to all of our recipes for "Charlotte Cooks".

Thanks for watching.

Dominic, thanks so much for being here.

- Thanks so much for having me.

- We'll catch you next time on "Charlotte Cooks".

(upbeat music) - [Speaker] A production of PBS Charlotte.