To me eating kale is like eating a garbage bag. Same look, texture and most likely the same taste. However, with the pandemic, life has changed and one of those changes is that now we are given our share at our CSA instead of having a choice. This means there’s no escaping the stuff. And not only is there no escaping the stuff–it’s popped up in every pickup so far. It’s going to be a long summer…
Since there’s no avoiding kale, we’re going to try to make the most of it.
The first thing everyone says is to massage your kale. Okay, but kale massaged is just like limp lettuce that’s been sitting in dressing for too long. Is this supposed to make it taste better, or just less like a garbage bag?
Somewhere along the line, people conned themselves into believing that if you massaged your kale, gave it a quick olive oil bath and baked it for 15 minutes, you’d have something edible—kale chips. Many, many people, in fact have conned themselves into believing that this is an acceptable snack food. Let’s review—edible snack food generally comes in a brightly colored bag, with lots of unpronounceable
Ingredients —none of them good for you.
Remember fois gras flavored potato chips? Kale chips are right up there. Mine were made edible (kinda, sorta) by the liberal use of my new favorite seasoning-Tajin. It’s a Mexican blend of chiles, lime and salt and it makes a lot of things better and kale edible. When I opened the bag that the kale chips were in, the smell was overwhelming like—kale, and that wasn’t a good thing.
But this is going to be a story with a happy ending, and we did find a way to (dare I say it?) enjoy kale. I remembered how much we love the collard greens at 82BBQ and I braised the kale like collards, with onion, bacon, chicken broth and some apple cider vinegar. Delicious and we ate the whole thing!
I know there are a lot of kale lovers out there and I’d love to know your go-to recipe in the comments below. Thanks!
