I am not obsessed with kale like Erik at Root Simple. I am not going to wear a shirt admonishing people to eat more kale. On second thought, if buying a shirt from a small business in Vermont pissed off the bigots at Chick Fil-A then I might whip out my credit card.
In the search for a snack that is devoid of any scary sounding preservatives I latched onto baked kale chips. A friend of mine always has a bowl of them handy and the crispy little bits are quite delicious. To my surprise, Costco had giant bags of baby kale this past week:
Just ~$5 for a big ol’ bag of baby kale. I split the bag with kale loving friend—he puts it in just about everything he cooks, which makes me wonder if he is part of some kale cult—and I set out to make kale chips.
It’s been a while since I felt like a total failure in the kitchen, but my attempts at kale chips brought me down to my knees. I tried batches at 250, 300, and 350 degrees like several recipes on the internet said would produce the perfect kale chip. I tried batches with very little oil or no oil at all. I salted some and tried other spices on some.
The end result looked okay:
Each time the batch totally lacked something that made it an appealing snack. The worst part was that every batch had a lingering aftertaste that accumulated after a few chips. It was actually quite awful. A swig of Chinook IPA took care of the aftertaste.
Furthermore, a good sized jelly roll pan produced very little in the way of finished products once the chips had reduced down. It was a lot of time, effort, and energy for very little return.
I am going to have to side with Dana Cowin who declared kale chips a passé foodie trend on a recent episode of Top Chef. At least no one is marketing kale deodorant because some clown has come up with bacon deodorant.
My Green Misadventure 