Kale Chips -- Kidney Diet

January 2014-  I am adding this to my 'kidney diet' list, and have posted updated oven directions.


The first thing I wanted to try making with my new Nesco American Harvest dehydrator (picked because it was $30 and had good reviews) was kale chips.

For those unfamiliar with the snack, kale chips are made of baked or dried kale which forms a crunchy papery texture.  Traditionally T and I make these by tossing a bunch of kale with olive oil and baking at 300F for ~3min, but we have a 50% burn rate (the progression is: wilted and gross, chips!, burned byond use) so I wanted to try them in the dehydrator. . .

But first a handy kale tip!  
The kale I bought looked very wilted, so I treated it like flowers, cut an inch off the stems and put them in a vase, and poof, perfect kale.  I recommend this as a pre-step for recipes where kale will be eaten raw.

Kale chips work best with "Dino kale" (the kind in the above picture) which has one central vein.
Prepping the kale:

1. Wash the leaves
2. Using a sharp knife cut out the large central vein, and then bisect the two leaf halves to quarter the leaf.

For the oven:

1. Toss 1 bunch with 1tbspn olive oil\
2. Sprinkle on 1/16th tspn salt
3. You can make variants by adding black pepper and lemon juice as well
4. Spread out on racks in a 220F oven and leave for 20min

For the dehydrator:

1. Optionally blanch the kale (see below)
2. Lay the pieces out in a single layer on the trays
3. Check every 30min (your time may vary from my results below) and be sure to taste the kale when you think it is done.  There is a point where the kale looks dry but still has a chewy mouth feel and needs an extra 20min

My first batch of kale chips had a much stronger and bitter taste than the oven variety, so I decided to do a side beside comparison between untreated and blanched kale. To blanch the kale I put the cut pieces in a pot with 1 inch of boiling water and covered it for 2min as a sort of lazy steam.

Here are the two types laid out int he dehydrator:

 
















And here are the finished products: 

The blanched kale has a sweeter and less bitter taste, and a much prettier dark color (not that you can tell from this crazy yellow photo), so I recommend the step.  I think these will be very good sprayed with a little olive oil and sprinkled with salt (our Misto is broken and I don't want to drench them, so I can't do the +olive oil test until I buy a new one).  I feel like the taste over-all is more kale-y and less chip-like than the oven variety which fried a little in its oil coating, but will probably still preferentially make these since it felt less hands on, and there was less burning.



A final note on time:  The unblanched kale took 2 hours and the blanched took 1 hour, so you really save on dehydrator time by blanching, which means it's a good option if you want to crank these out for a party or something.