What we’re eating: Kale chips

In my recent post about our CSA, I mentioned that we receive email newsletters from the farmer telling us what vegetables to expect in the weekly delivery box. The farmer also sometimes adds recipes that highlight one or more of the week’s vegetables. Recently, we received a big bunch of kale in the box and got an accompanying recipe for kale chips — kale coated in olive oil and salt and baked in the oven.

Kale Chips

Ingredients

• one bunch of kale
• extra virgin olive oil, to taste
• salt or seasoned salt, to taste

Directions

Wash and thoroughly dry kale. Remove tough stems from kale and tear leaves into chip-size pieces. Drizzle olive oil on a cookie sheet (I used about 2 tablespoons of the oil). Spread kale pieces on top of the olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Mix kale and olive oil generously so that the kale is evenly coated. Add more olive oil, if necessary. Bake in a preheated 350 degree F oven for 10-15 minutes until the kale is crispy but not burnt. Watch the chips closely though — mine were definitely done by about 10 minutes. (By the way, this is essentially the same method that I use to roast asparagus which I love.)

Here is the kale just before I put it in the oven:

And here are the chips all crispy and paired with some macaroni and cheese I made for Charlie (in which I added white corn and peas for some extra veggies):

Okay, so Charlie wouldn’t touch the kale chips, but he ate all of the macaroni and cheese. And, I thought the kale chips were really good. I gave one to Mark — who has this really odd, inexplicable aversion to kale — and after eating a chip he said, “Wow, these aren’t bad.” That’s about the highest praise kale will ever get from Mark.

I’m definitely going to make kale chips again. Actually, I’m somewhat optimistic that if I make these chips enough times Charlie will eat them. His particular picky-eater preferences tend to run toward crunchy foods which these definitely are. So if I can just convince Charlie to try the funny-looking green chips I think he’d actually like them. And then parents of picky-eaters around the world would call me their hero.

UPDATE
I have now made the kale chips three times. The second time I made them I added too much salt and burned some of them. The third time I added just a small sprinkling of salt and checked on them after about 7 minutes. They were done by about 8-9 minutes and tasted great.

UPDATE 5/24/10
My mom just emailed to say that she’s now made kale chips a few times and offered a couple of tips:

I find it a lot easier to put the bite-size kale pieces into a bowl and toss them by hand with the olive oil & salt before spreading them on the baking sheet. I use a lot less oil than you suggest – barely one tbsp., but maybe I’m using less kale than you are (maybe half a bunch at a time). All that messing around with olive oil in a bowl is no doubt good for the hands, too – some must get absorbed by the skin as well as adhering to the kale.

Then she mentioned that Kiki’s sauce makes a yummy dip for the kale chips. Thanks for the tips, Mom!

UPDATE 6/7/10
I have used this kale chips recipe with swiss chard as well as kohlrabi greens. Both turned out great — maybe not quite as good as the kale, but definitely still quite tasty.

Advertisement