This Grilled Swiss Chard with Cherries is the perfect side dish for your Spring gathering. It’s full of color and flavor and works great as a vegetarian dish. If you have Swiss Chard in the garden, grab a bunch and grill this up for dinner tonight. It comes together easily and makes for a healthy warm salad meal.
Grilled Swiss Chard with Cherries
So we have a ton of swiss chard still growing in the garden. It survived winter and it just keeps growing. My husband’s parents came over to dine with us and they were excited to grab salad stuff from our garden and cook it for dinner. My hubby’s mom shared a delicious Grilled Swiss Chard with Cherries recipe with me and it was so yummy I wanted to share it here on the food blog.
Prepping Swiss Chard
Swiss chard is a very tough leaf and the smaller leaves work well in a regular dinner salad, but once the leaves have reached gargantuan size, it’s great to chop them up smaller and grill them with some sweet flavors. Our organic swiss chard leaves are reaching one to two feet long now! To make this Grilled Swiss Chard with Cherries dish, you’ll need a large bunch of the leaves chopped up small. The leaves reduce down in size as they cook, so try gathering enough to fill a large stock pot.
Using all the parts of the Swiss Chard
We’re all about trying to use up as much of the vegetable as we can when we cook. The Swiss Chard stems are a beautiful bright red color when they are cooked and they actually make the dish look that much better. Chop the stem pieces into 1-2 inch chunk sizes. These pieces will get cooked down in butter first as they need extra time to soften.
What Makes Grilled Swiss Chard Taste so Yummy?
Basically what makes grilled swiss chard so delightful is the olive oil, butter, garlic and dried cherries. This is such an easy dish to prepare for dinner. If you are using a high quality butter, it’s actually very healthy for you. The sweet taste of the cherries cuts the bitterness of the swiss chard a great deal. As the swiss chard cooks down in the oil, butter and garlic, it softens into a yummy leafy green which pairs perfectly with pork chops, lamb, or steak.
Tips for Making Grilled Swiss Chard with Cherries
- We love using a large stock pot to cook down the Swiss Chard.
- Cook Swiss Chard stems first to soften them. This will give you time to add all the ingredients for the yummy buttery sauce.
- You can use raisins if you can’t find dried cherries. We get our cherries from Trader Joe’s!
- Once you add the minced garlic to the pot, just heat the garlic for about 1 minute until fragrant. Then add the leaves in and stir.
- If you don’t have enough room in your stock pot to cook all your Swiss Chard leaves, add the first batch and allow them to cook down for a minute or two and then add the next batch.
- Adding an acid such as lemon juice will help with taste. This dish is so wonderful because it hits the bitter, sweet and acidic points on the tongue.
| Prep Time | 10 minutes |
| Cook Time | 20 minutes |
| Servings |
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- 15-20 Swiss Chard Leaves Stems chopped separately and leaves chopped
- 3 tbsp Grapeseed Oil
- 1/4 tsp Salt Add More to taste
- 1/4 tsp Lemon Pepper
- Pinch Herbs de Provence
- 1/8 tsp Garlic Powder
- 1 cup Dried Cherries Or 1/2 cup Raisins, Cherries come from Trader Joe's
- 3 tbsp Butter
- 3 cloves garlic Minced
- 1 tsp Lemon Juice
- 3 tbsp olive oil
Ingredients
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- Chop stems off of Swiss Chard leaves and cut into 1-2 inch chunks. Chop the leaves into 2-4 inch pieces and set aside. Place stems in a large stock pot and heat on medium heat with grapeseed oil. Add 1/4 cup water to steam the stems and cover for about 5 minutes to soften the stems.
- Add salt, lemon pepper, Herbs de Provence, 1 tbsp of the butter and garlic powder and stir the ingredients into the stems.
- Add the dried cherries or raisins into the pot with another 1/4 cup water to steam. Allow to simmer and continue stirring. Some of the water will boil away. Add the minced garlic and the rest of the butter to the pot and stir for about 1 minute.
- Add the Swiss Chard leaves filling up the stock pot and continue turning them into the sauce at the bottom of the pot. If the leaves don't all fit, allow the first batch to cook down for 1-2 minutes and stir and then add the next batch. The leaves will significantly reduce in size.
- Drizzle the leaves with the olive oil and lemon juice. Add more salt to taste if needed. Stir until the leaves are very tender. Serve warm and enjoy!
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