Dehydrating Things...

I kind of love the idea of taking a whole head of something green and easily turning it into something deliciously snack-able. I decided to try more dehydrating since it was so easy and I never otherwise eat chips. Back to "Making Love In The Kitchen" from the National Post, from where I took a few more recipes, decided I didn't quite like them, changed them, and created my own batches of kale chips.

Macro-Asian Kale Chips
Ingredients:
1/2 head of kale, washed and torn into small pieces
juice of half a lemon
1 tbsp miso
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tbsp ground almonds

Sweet Thai Kale Chips
1/2 head of kale, washed and torn into small pieces
3/4 tsp sugar substitute (or sugar, or honey)
2 tbsp rice vinegar
1/4 tsp sriracha hot sauce (the big red bottles at Thai, Chinese, or Vietanamese restaurants, or a sweet hot sauce, or hot sauce plus a bit of extra sugar)
1 tbsp chopped peanuts
1/8 tsp salt

Basically I had some leftover sweetened vinaigrette from some thai noodles in a small container along with some peanuts and hot sauce from the Cambodian/Malaysian festival at Parc Jean-Drapeau last weekend, so I figured I'd use it here instead of on more noodles. I kind of O.D.'d on noodles...mmm...The macro-asian chips I just wanted to try without sesame and oil. Basically I wanted to see if this worked fine without the added fats. I only added the almonds at the last minute for a bit of texture, but kept the quantity very low.

All you do is mix all the ingredients together, lay them out in a single layer in two big baking sheets, and stick them in the oven with the door slightly open on the lowest possible temperature for about 4 hours, or until they're crispy. They stick to the bottom of the pan, so you can use wax paper and save yourself some clean-up (and some waste, since the kale dehydrates and you actually lose a fair bit to the baking sheet).

It kind of helps to turn them halfway, to make sure it all dehydrates evenly, but if you don't it's really not the end of the world. So some chips are more crispy than others. You can honestly use any ingredients here and these will be delicious, as long as there's a tiny bit of salt involved. Dehydrated plain kale is all well and good, but it has no taste. The miso is very salty, so feel free to cut back on that if it's too much, and if you want to avoid sugar, feel free to leave it out, along with honey or other sugary substitutes. The only way to make this gross, I think is to have no real seasoning. Herbs won't cut it. Dairy is not a great idea because you're leaving it out at a not so great temperature. Miso is okay because the fermentation is good, that's why I left it in there, but meat would be an awful idea, because I don't know what this is like for bacteria and contamination. Keep it vegan-friendly and you'll be in the clear. Oh, and happy. Probably glowing, like all those raw foodists seem to be.

Dehydrated Kale Chips

More raw eating. How can you make kale any better for you? Well, I don't think it gets better, but it gets tastier and less of a trial to force into your body, like potato chips. Not in that potato chips are hard to force into your body, but that it's easy to eat a lot of them...too many in fact. Is there such a thing as too many kale chips? Yes, it turns out that there is. My ill-made point is that it's easier to eat a whole bag of potato chips than a small bag of bland, uncooked potatoes. Maybe not the best comparison, but it does the trick.

Much more delicious than they sound, these chips are from The National Post's cooking blog "Making Love In the Kitchen". I like it, overall. The woman's pretty knowledgeable, happy, and honest. Globe & Mail, if you want to compete with this, I am available (feel free to contact these people on my behalf. Choose someone from the Life section). I'm not saying I'm her equal, but you can definitely afford me. Anyway, the blog gives all sorts of different seasonings for dehydrating kale chips, all of which have too much fat, in my opinion, but the method is sound, and the result is delicious.

These things fall apart in your mouth, the chips. They dissolve from paper-thin pieces of green parchment to pools of salty, spicy flavour. I love it.

My variation on the Macro-Asian Kale Chips recipe:

1 Head of Kale, washed, dried and torn into bite size pieces
3 sheets of nori, cut with scissors into small pieces (this took forever! but it was very much worth it in the end, since the nori doesn't fall apart like the kale, and you end up with chewy little pieces that are covered in the delicious marinade)

Marinade
2 tbsp cup black sesame seeds (or white will work too)
2 tbsp miso paste
2 tbsp lemon juice (the juice of 1/2 - 1 lemon)
1/2 tsp fleur de sel (it's what I had, but use any salt is fine)
1 tbsp sesame oil
2 tsp tamari
cayenne to taste (I ended up dumping in too much by accident. Good thing I like it spicy...)

Put the marinade ingredients in a blender and process them until they're smooth. The recipe says as a little water as you need, and I think I used about 2 tbsp. It just takes longer to dehydrate the kale if you use more water.

Then put the nori, washed kale and marinade together in a large bowl and massage well with your hands. You really want to coat everywhere. Oh, the recipe originally called for 1 tbsp of maple syrup and I just left it out. Normally I'd replace it with honey, but I wanted a more savoury chip. Use your liquid sweetener of choice.

Line a baking sheet in parchment paper and put it in the oven on the lowest possible temperature with the door open. I'm pretty sure in the current Montreal weather this step is unnecessary...it certainly feels like my apartment is hotter than my oven. I have never felt so much like a baked good...I should just put the raw kale in me to cook and by the time it digests it'll be dehydrated, along with the rest of me.

So you can also do this recipe in a dehydrator but who has one of those? Unless you're "raw". The oven works fine. I left it overnight. I know I know, I shouldn't leave the oven on overnight, but it was so low and I was there the whole time, and my fire alarm works, so I took my chances. It was worth it. The chips were absolutely delicious. I don't like all the sesame, but the lemon and cayenne with the miso and tamari gave a really nice acidic and salty bite to the chips. Basically it feels like you're eating marinade and air...more delicious than you'd think. So the next time you don't know what to do with a head of kale and you don't feel like chewing, and chewing and chewing, try this out. You won't believe how fast the head of kale disappears into your stomach. OH! and feel free to leave out the oil in the recipes. It's kind of a preservative if you use it, so the kale'll l last longer in the fridge, but you can happily eat more of it at once without it. You won't even get sick from eating too heavy a snack, or, God forbid, spoil your dinner. People apparently still do that. Not just kids.