Why You’ll Love This Recipe
There are quite a few reasons that these homemade kale chips are so much better than store bought. We’ll list just a few:
- Affordable: Most of us health-curious food lovers have purchased a bag of kale chips before and felt the pain of spending $10 on what feels like half an ounce of mostly-air. Fresh kale is really affordable, and you can save a lot of money by turning that kale into crispy kale chips yourself.
- Healthier: Store-bought kale chips still have to have some kind of preservative to keep them crisp in the bag. You can avoid any kind of industrial food tricks and keep this healthy snack truly healthy by making them yourself.
- Easy to customize: These kale chips play nicely with nearly every seasoning on your shelf! Nutritional yeast is a hippie food classic, but we’ve got a whole host of seasoning ideas for you below.
3 Key Ingredients
- Kale: Either curly kale or Tuscan kale (which is also sometimes labeled Lacinato kale or cavolo nero) work well for making kale chips. The leaves are, well, leafy. Good to know: Kale is one of the so-called ‘dirty dozen’ veggies, meaning it has the potential to carry a lot of carcinogenic pesticides, so it’s a good idea to buy organic if you can, and from a really reputable grocery store or even farmers market. For more kale recipes, try our simple, stunning Kale Salad or super-satisfying Kale Caesar.
- Olive oil: We love the flavor of extra virgin olive oil here, but regular olive oil would work fine. Tip: Don’t overdo the oil! Less is more here — too much oil will make your kale chips soggy.
- Salt: You’ll massage the salt and oil into the kale to make the chips the perfect texture.
How To Make Kale Chips
- Cut the kale into ‘chips’: Our favorite tip for removing the leaves from the stalk is to fold the leaf in half (like closing a book) and slice your knife right down the stalk. Voila — two de-stalked leaves for a single knife slice. Cut or tear the leaves into smaller pieces. Then, be sure to give your kale a really good rinse and spin in a salad spinner (if you’ve got one).
- Massage the kale. Much like you and I do, kale enjoys a good massage. But seriously, after drizzling them with oil and salt (and any other seasonings you’d like to add), give the kale a quick massage (basically smash and scrunch the kale leaves in your hands) to tenderize it a bit before you bake it. This helps create the perfect kale chip texture.
- Bake! Bake the chips for about 10 minutes, then shuffle the chips around on the sheet pan (for even cooking) and bake again until they’re done. Keep an eye on them — you want them to be perfectly crispy, but not burned.
Seasoning Ideas
- Nutritional yeast: If you haven’t added nutritional yeast to your list of pantry staples yet, now’s the time! Loaded with B vitamins and it tastes a little bit like vegan Parmesan cheese. Savory, salty, healthy — this iconic hippie food ingredient rocks.
- Pimentón (smoked paprika)
- Garlic powder or garlic salt
- Curry powder
- Garam Masala + Cumin + Coriander: A classic spice combo from our favorite Indian recipes — bet it would be amazing on kale chips.
- Old Bay
- Taco seasoning: Is there anything our trusty taco seasoning can’t do? Doubt it.
- Everything Bagel Seasoning
More Healthy Snack Ideas
More Snacky Goodness This Way
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