Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 424 kcal | 120 kcal |
| Protein | 37.2 g | 10.5 g |
| Fat | 7.8 g | 2.2 g |
| saturated | 0.8 g | 0.2 g |
| Carbohydrate | 38.1 g | 10.8 g |
| sugars | 19.9 g | 5.6 g |
| Fibre | 35.5 g | 10.1 g |
| Sodium | 329 mg | 93 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
Ingredients
- 180 g kale, thick stems removed
Instructions
- Tear the leaves off the stems rather than cutting them, working from the base of the rib upwards. The rib is woody and will not grind; the tearing also leaves the leaf less bruised than a knife does.
- Handle the leaves gently from here on. Kale bruises dark where it is crushed, and every bruised patch shows up as a brown fleck in an otherwise green powder.
- Wash them and dry them thoroughly, shaking the water out of the curls. Curly kale traps water in its frills and that water is the last thing to leave the tray.
- Tear the leaves into pieces larger than you would for a salad. They shrink dramatically and small pieces end up as fragments that blow about inside the machine.
- Dry at 52 °C for 7 hours, using a mesh liner so nothing lifts into the fan. Dried kale weighs almost nothing and the airflow will move it.
- The leaves are ready when they crumble to dust between finger and thumb instead of folding. Try one that has been out of the machine a few minutes — warm kale always feels crisper than it is.
- Crush the cooled leaves by hand into the grinder rather than tipping whole ones in, and grind in short bursts. A packed grinder just spins the leaves around the blade without cutting them.
- Store the powder in an airtight jar in the dark and use it within six months. It stays safe well past that; what goes is the colour and the grassy flavour, and a jar that has faded to olive is not worth stirring into anything.
