Kamala Harris’ Secret to Delicious Greens Is a Bathtub and Some Tabasco

When Kamala Harris goes to parties, she brings bathtub greens. Okay, not all parties, just Christmas Eve ones. The US Vice-President is currently on the campaign trail after announcing she was running for president in July, but while her focus is, of course, on politics, she still has time to talk about one of her other loves: cooking. A few days ago, she stopped to talk about how she used to make greens for a Christmas Eve party— with the help of the bathtub.

“I have a friend who had a Christmas Party,” she says in a video posted to Instagram. “She asked me to make the greens every year. And I am not lying to you that I would make so many greens that I’d need to wash them in the bathtub. I’m telling you the truth.”

The VP then went on to explain the details of her recipe, which starts with garlic, chili peppers, water, bacon fat, and chicken stock. “I let it go for a while before I put the greens in,” she explained. “You get that going and all that flavor, and then I put the greens in for a couple of hours. Then I do vinegar, and I cheat and do a little Tabasco.” She added: “I like Louisiana hot sauce, but Tabasco has that right amount of vinegar.”

Veeg

RELATED: New Platform “Kamala’s Recipes” Supports the Kamala Harris Campaign Through Cooking

If you want to make a plant-based version of Harris’ greens, you could swap the chicken stock for vegetable stock, and the bacon for a vegan version. This recipe from Veeg, for example, tops Southern-style smoky vegan collard greens with vegan bacon pieces made from coconut flakes. Alternatively, you could swap in one of the many plant-based bacon products on the market (find our guide to the best brands here!).

One part of Harris’ greens recipe that won’t need swapping is Tabasco. Originally developed in Louisiana, the mildly spicy sauce is made with just a handful of simple ingredients: red peppers, vinegar, and salt. If Tabasco isn’t your thing, or you like a little more heat, you can find more plant-based hot sauce recommendations here.

Kamala Harris and plant-based cooking

Harris loves to cook, and this love has been reflected in her campaign—recently, several renowned chefs and restaurateurs raised more than $220,000 for the vice president in a virtual Cooking for Kamala event. The chefs demonstrated three different dishes during the Zoom event, including one of Harris’ own chicken recipes.

Kamala Harris YouTube

The Vice-President has long enjoyed creating dishes. Before she announced her run for the presidency, Harris occasionally participated in cooking and baking content for her YouTube account (some of which was part of a series called Cooking with Kamala).

In one video, she appears alongside actor and comedian Mindy Kaling, as they make traditional South Indian dosas and potato curry. During the video, she talks about her heritage and her visits to South India as a child, when she would eat a lot of plant-based meals.

“South Indian is vegetarian, it’s all vegetarian,” she said, after recalling how she would often eat dal (“lots of dal”), potato curry, idli (a type of steamed cake made with fermented rice and black lentils), and rice and yogurt. “My grandmother, of course, was strictly no, nothing. If it had a mother, it was not getting eaten,” she said. Her grandfather was a little more “mischievous” with food, she added, and would treat them to French toast when her grandmother was out of town.

Is Kamala Harris plant-based?

As an adult, Harris still eats plant-based food regularly, but she’s not 100-percent plant-based (as is evident from her bacon greens recipe). However, in 2021, she visited the Las Vegas vegan Mexican restaurant Tacotarian, where she told staff that she usually only eats plant-based food before 6pm every day. 

In the past, she has also expressed concern over red meat consumption due to its negative health impacts (red meat is associated with an increased risk of chronic diseases, including heart disease and cancer) and its impact on the environment. In an interview with CNN in 2019, she expressed support for altering dietary guidelines to reduce red meat.

“I love cheeseburgers from time to time. Right,” she said. “But there has to be also what we do in terms of creating incentives that we will eat in a healthy way, that we will encourage moderation, and that we will be educated about the effects of our eating habits on our environment, and we have to do a much better job of that. And the government has to do a much better job of that.”