Recipe: Kale Chips

My friend Shannon introduced me to kale chips, and for that alone she has my undying affection. Let's face it -- sometimes it's hard to eat your greens. Try as we might, there's often only so much sauteed or steamed kale that one can consume.

Kale chips change all of that. The picture on the left isn't mine -- it was taken from the web. This is because I always eat all of my kale chips before I remember to get the camera. Kale is a wonderfully nutrient-dense food, and I can eat a whole bunch of kale in a few minutes when it's prepared as chips.

There are as many ways to prepare kale chips as there are cooks. I'll share my basic recipe, but you should feel free to experiment!

You'll need:
1 bunch kale (you should use organic if you can, because kale is one of The Dirty Dozen)
olive oil
salt
Optional: nutritional yeast, onion powder, and/or cayenne powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Rinse kale. Strip the leaves off the stems and cut into bite-size pieces. Place the kale pieces in a large pyrex baking dish (like a lasagna pan). Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Stir the kale chips to lightly coat the pieces with the oil.

Place the pan in the oven. Bake for 20-22 minutes, stirring every once in a while to keep the pieces from sticking. You want to bake the kale until all of it is crispy, like a light chip.

After kale chips are done, you can sprinkle with nutritional yeast, onion powder, cayenne, or anything else you'd like. They're also delicious with just the olive oil and salt.
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I've found that some people dry their kale leaves after rinsing them (before cutting them up), and that reduces the cooking time significantly.

My friend Charmaine has a cooking blog called Speakeasy Kitchen, and she wrote a poetic little ode to kale chips.