Organic & Thrifty

Sorry for the poor quality picture!

There was a time when I thought kale was just a decoration for salad bars.  Who knew it was such a nutritious green (is there any other kind?) with so much versatility.  The challege, of course, is getting kale to appeal to wee ones, or anyone else with greenophobia.   What follows is a delicious, low-carb, nourishing snack reminiscent of potato chips!

It was a total coincidence that the famed Gluten-Free Girl recently posted her thoughts on kale chips around the same time I began this blog post. As I was about to write this post, I found her recipe and thought I would halt the presses, and do more recipe development from her inspiration. 

My version differs quite signficantly; she uses slick Italian Lacinato Kale, I use regular garden-variety kale (both work!). I have not tried using Red Russian Kale, and I’m not sure the texture would hold up quite as well. If you try it, let me know.  Lacinato Kale is sleek and firm, and easy to work with.  Our CSA share last week happened to be drowning in several varieties of regular “salad bar” kale, and it worked great.

Many kale chip recipes around the ‘net (and there are many!) use olive oil as their fat of choice.  I have tried olive oil and it certainly does the job, however after researching more about vegetable oils, I am not recommending using olive oil to cook at high temperatures. Olive oil is best used in salad dressings or for drizzling on to vegetables.  You can get by with low heat sauteeing, but even that is questionabe in my mind. The trouble is, the fat molecules in olive oil are monosaturates and polysaturates, which are much less stable in high heat.  The best fat for cooking at high heat is saturatd fat: butter, coconut oil, poultry fat, or bacon drippings.  You can even use a blend of saturated fat with a bit of olive oil, as the saturated fat helps stablize the mono- and poly-unsaturated fats in the olive oil.

These chips are flavored with salt, pepper, nutritional food yeast, and garlic powder.  Nutritional yeast is a great flavoring that also contains many B-vitamins and other essenial nutrients. 

Kale is a low-calorie, high fiber, nutrient-rich green. It is extremely high in beta-carotene and vitamin K. For more reasons than you ever needed to eat kale, go here.

Kale Chips

Ingredients:

1 bunch kale (lacinato or curly leaf, purple or green)
2 T bacon grease, or coconut oil
1 T olive oil (optional; if omitting, add 1 more T of coconut oil)
1 T nutritional yeast
1/2 t garlic powder
sea salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350. Rinse kale under running water to remove all grit and dirt.  Spin in a salad spinner or shake well to remove excess water.

2. Remove kale from stalks and cut into bite-sized pieces.  Place in a large bowl, and toss with melted oils/drippings and seasonings.  NOTE: Depending upon the size of your bunch of kale, you may need to adjust the amount of oil.You don’t want the kale too soggy; just slightly “dressed” as in a salad dressing.

3.  Place kale into a large roasting pan in a thin layers.

4. Place in oven and roast for about 20 minutes, checking and stirring every 5 minutes.  Kale will be done when it is crispy and bright green.

5. Remove from oven, let cool briefly, and enjoy!  These are tasty and addictive! Enjoy!