I have been hearing about how life changing kale chips are for what seems like years now. So I was sure to pick up a *huge* bunch of kale from the Spenard Farmer’s Market this past weekend for a whopping $3 to give it a go myself. The internet and even my local sources seemed torn in the debate: oven or dehydrate. So I figured I would do a little of each. After 8 years (It’s not that much of an exaggeration) my chips in the dehydrator are still a little chewy, where as the ones done on the oven were crispy and (would have been delicious had I not had some sort of stroke when salting them) ready in 20 minutes.
What to do: wash and rinse kale and rip into bite sized (think potato chip) pieces and mix in a bowl with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, a dash of vinegar and not nearly as much salt as I used. Make sure all pieces are coated with the oil mixture and spread out on either your dehydrator rack or cookie sheet. Now, like I said, for the sake of the power grid in your neighborhood, expediency and anything else you can think of, I would avoid the dehydrator (or as the little Einstein in training who recorded it on our house inventory sheet post fire spelled it: Dyehediator), but to each his own.
After all of this, I have to say I’m not sold. Maybe I’m just too much of a junk food addict or not quite creative enough to get past the “this is so green and healthy and tastes so, well, green” but the kale chips didn’t do it for me. If you have some sort of suggestion to make them awesome, I’m all ears. Because really, I want to be one of the cool kids. I want to be a crunchy kale loving hippie….it just hasn’t happened yet.
annie.crafty.pants 