Ingredients
- 180 g of kale
- 2 to 4 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon real salt
Instructions
- Strip the leaves off the stems and keep the stems for something else. A stem in a kale chip never goes crisp and it is the piece that gets spat out.
- Wash the leaves and get them properly dry, because this is the step that decides the batch. Oil will not stick to a wet leaf; it beads up and runs off, and you end up with bare patches that burn.
- Tear the leaves into pieces bigger than you think you need. They shrink by more than half and a small piece ends up as a fragment.
- Start with the smaller amount of oil and add more only if leaves are still dull. Over-oiled kale never crisps — it stays soft and greasy no matter how long it runs — and the difference between enough and too much is about a tablespoon.
- Massage the oil in with your hands rather than tossing with a spoon. Working it into the frills is what gets the oil where a spoon cannot, and it takes a minute.
- Salt after the oil, then spread the kale in a loose heap rather than a flat layer, shaking the tray to settle it. Kale is light enough to be lifted by the fan and a loose heap stays put.
- Dry at 52 °C for 2.5 hours, which is a short run by this machine's standards. Start looking at the halfway mark.
- A finished chip shatters when you press it. Let a piece cool before judging — kale is the worst offender for feeling crisp on the tray and going limp on the plate. Store them in an airtight container and eat them within a week, because oiled leaves do not keep and these are best the day they are made.
Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 625 kcal | 177 kcal |
| Protein | 13.2 g | 3.7 g |
| Fat | 56.4 g | 16 g |
| saturated | 7.7 g | 2.2 g |
| Carbohydrate | 13.5 g | 3.8 g |
| sugars | 7.1 g | 2 g |
| Fibre | 12.6 g | 3.6 g |
| Sodium | 1850 mg | 525 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
