pro bono appetit: Red Chard with Bacon and Caramelized Onion

My mom got me the best valentines day gift this year. She didn't get chocolate or flowers, but rather she picked out all of the most amazing red products in the grocery store, from strawberries to raspberries to red peppers. Some of these treats were favorites, like pull-n-peel twizzlers, and some were items I had never seen before, much less cooked. One of those items was red chard. I had no idea what to do with it, so I checked out recipes online and found that some people paired it with caramelized onions, and some with bacon. I thought, why not both? This recipe is all about how to make a healthy vegetable unhealthy. But hey, it was delicious so I'm not complaining.

What you'll need:

1 white onion

1 bunch red chard

a few slabs of bacon

1 tsp brown or white sugar

Dash of lemon juice

Look how beautiful this chard is!

Start by chopping up the stems and separating them from the leaves. The stems take a little bit longer to cook so that's why you need to separate.

Coarsely chop the leaves.

Thinly slice the onion

Put the onion slices in a small pot with a splash of water and brown sugar to slowly cook and caramelize

They should look something like this when they're done

Cook the bacon in a separate skillet

When the bacon is done, take them, place them on a paper towel and break into pieces

Don't throw out the bacon fat! Well, throw out about half of the bacon fat at the bottom of the pan. Then, put the chard stems in the pan and slowly stir them around slow heat till they're almost done.