Poco Mountain Girl

I’ve heard a lot about kale chips, but I’ve never tried them. Have you? They say they’re crispy, thin, and savory – a lot like potato chips. Only they’re made of kale, of course, and much healthier than other kinds of chips.

Today as I was weeding my garden, I looked at the 2 big rows of leafy kale and decided today would be the day I make kale chips.

Their are a few different popular recipes for kale chips floating around the internet – some raw, some baked. You can use any type of kale – curly, Lacinato, or Russian, which is what I used. You add the kale to a marinade, massage it a little to soften it up, and bake or dry it till crispy. Lots of recipes call for a simple marinade of olive oil and sea salt, but some are a bit more complex. I experimented and came up with my own marinade from what I had on hand, but I’ll bet you could come up with something just as tasty from what you have in your kitchen.

Here iss the mixture I made up:

1 lb kale (4-5 cups, spines removed and loosely packed)

2 T apple cider vinegar

½ tsp honey

1 tsp chipotle flavored Tabasco sauce, liquid smoke, or other flavoring (I mixed chipotle Tabasco and liquid smoke)

¼ tsp sea salt

¼ cp T olive oil

¼ cp fresh lemon juice

¼ cp nutritional yeast

I washed my kale and removed the tough spines, then tore them into 2” pieces and added the marinade. I massaged it together for about 1 minute, until it felt soft and a little wilted. At that point, the kale would have made a yummy meal as it was. Zia loved it and I had to set aside quite a bit for her. She gobbled it right up! But I had vowed to make chips, so I followed through.

I wanted my chips raw, so I spread them in a single layer on my unlined dehydrator trays. I set the dehydrator at 110 degrees for 2 hours. If you want to bake them, you can set your oven to the lowest temperature and bake about 15 minutes (keep checking to make sure they don’t burn). You can also use parmesan cheese instead of the nutritional yeast.

Mine are drying now, so the jury is still out on the finished product. I’ll let you know how they turn out…but they definitely smell good!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 11th, 2011 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Happy Healthy Hippie Food, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.