The Part of Swiss Chard You Should Never Throw Away

If you routinely cut the stems off Swiss chard and toss them, you’re throwing away a perfectly good part of the vegetable. The stems are crisp, flavorful, and completely edible. They just need to be cooked differently from the leaves.

That’s also the secret to avoiding one of the most common problems with Swiss chard: mushy leaves paired with stems that are still practically raw.

Give the Stems a Head Start

Eden Faithfull of America’s Test Kitchen recommends a simple method for cooking Swiss chard stems and leaves: separate the two before cooking, chop the stems into small pieces, and put them in the pan first.

Once the stems have had time to soften, add the leaves and cook just until they’re wilted. That’s really all there is to it.

The reason it works is simple. Chard stems are thicker and need more cooking time, while the delicate leaves can go from tender to overcooked quickly. Giving each part its own time in the pan means you get tender stems and properly wilted greens instead of sacrificing one for the other.

Don’t Treat the Stems Like Scraps

There’s another reason to keep them: they add something the leaves don’t. Properly cooked chard stems have a pleasant bite and plenty of flavor, giving the finished dish more texture.

And the same trick works beyond a basic sauté. When you’re making soup, add chopped stems to the broth first and stir in the leaves toward the end. For gratins and other baked dishes, cook the stems briefly before combining them with the leaves.

Once you start treating Swiss chard as two ingredients with two different cooking times, it’s much easier to get right. You’ll also get more food out of every bunch, which is reason enough to stop sending those colorful stems to the compost bin.