Salted Kale Chips
Kale Chip
Kale chips… the raw vegan alternative to potato chips. I’m addicted to them. I eat about a third of them before they even finish dehydrating. Even if I ate junk food, I’d choose kale chips over potato chips, or tortilla chips any day. Yes, they really are that good! And here’s the thing… kale is really, really good for you. Prepared this way it’s easy to eat a whole mixing bowl of kale in one sitting. My dogs adore them, I’m sure kids will too. They’re simple to make too, it’s easy to experiment, and it’s hard to go wrong with them. Here’s the most basic recipe for salted kale chips. So if you get the hankering for something salty, crunchy and oily instead of reaching for the potato chips, try some of these healthy, nutritious kale chips instead.
Ingredients:
2 bunches of kale, rinse and remove stem
3 tablespoon olive oil or hemp seed oil
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
Celtic or Himalyan sea salt to taste
Instructions:
- Mix the oil, apple cider vinegar and salt in a large mixing bowl. It’s easy to add more salt later and adjust it to your taste.
- Tear the kale leaves up into bite-sized pieces. Think potato chip size, they will shrink a bit once they are dehydrated. Toss the kale pieces into the bowl with the oil and vinegar.
- Periodically mix the kale as you are adding it by tossing the kale in the oil and ACV mixture. Get your hands in there and massage the oil into the kale. You’re aiming to have the oil and ACV evenly coating all of the kale. It’s easier to do this if you add a bit of kale, toss and massage, add some more kale, toss and massage and repeat until you have used up all the kale.
Making Kale Chips: Massaging the kale
- Place a Teflex sheet on top of a dehydrator tray and drop a handful or two of the coated kale leaves onto it. Try to spread the kale around so it’s not all clumped together, but you don’t have to be too particular about placing each individual piece because it will shrink and separate a bit as it’s dehydrating.
Kale chips spread on Teflex sheet
- Dehydrate overnight at 105 degrees F.
- In the morning, turn the kale onto a regular dehydrator tray to finish it off. Dehydrate for another 2-4 hours until crispy.
Kale chips almost ready to eat
- Eat fresh from the dehydrator or store in a tightly sealed glass jar to keep them crisp. I’m not sure how long they will keep because they never last for more than 2 days around me
Store kale chips in a glass jar
Enjoy!
Variations:
I’ll be posting the recipes for more flavors soon, but once you get the idea from this basic recipe try experimenting with adding different spices.
- Want it a little hot and spicy? Try adding some cayenne.
- Craving a cheesy flavor? Just add some nutritional yeast or parmesan (if you eat dairy).
You get the idea. If you come up with some tasty variations be sure to share them in the comments.
Related posts:
Probiotics for Health
Healing With The Masters Free Teleseminar
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I’m making some today and I wanted a very simple recipe. Thanks! I know they are going to be delish.
Cool! I love kale chips now, so much more satisfying than potato chips. I just can’t get enough of them. Let us know how yours turn out.
Can I make Kale juice . normally I drink fresh carret and cellry juice. How can I get most from the kale.
Thanks!
@gkumar sorry it took me a little while to answer your question, but I wanted to look up some information before I replied because I know there’s a caution on consuming lots of kale if you have certain medical conditions. So here’s what I found…
Kale juice is excellent when mixed in with other fresh vegetable juices, but you probably don’t want to have more than your 1/3 of your juice mix to be kale juice, because it can be quite strong tasting. If the leaves are really large you may have to cut them, but smaller leaves can just be fed into your juicer just like you would with parsley. I’d suggest using your celery or carrot to push the kale leaves through, and I think it would go very nicely with your daily carrot and celery juice. I prefer blended drinks to vegetable juices at the moment (both are great for you and each has it’s advantages), and kale usually features quite prominently in my green smoothies too. The only thing I’d advise is that you don’t put kale into anything that you are going to keep for any length of time before drinking. I usually make up about 2 litres of blended green smoothie and it takes me the whole morning to finish it off. That’s fine if I consume it within about 3 hours of blending it up, but when I’ve tried to keep them to drink later in the day I find the kale gets really pungent after sitting for much longer than 2-3 hours. If you don’t mind that radish/mustard type pungent flavor you might enjoy it, but I find it can get a bit too strong for me.
There is a caution with kale, or any of the cabbage family, and this is what I really wanted to look up before I answered because I know it’s easy to consume large amounts of vegetables in their juiced form. According to The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods by Michael T. Murray and Joseph Pizzorno “Members of the cabbage family contain goitrogens, naturally occurring substances that can interfere with the functioning of the thyroid glad. Dietary goitrogens are usually of no clinical importance unless they are consumed in large amounts or there is coexisting iodine deficiency. Individuals with already existing and untreated thyroid problems may want to avoid consumption of cabbage-family vegetables in their raw form for this reason.”
So that’s the first caution, and the second is, “Kale also contains significant amount of oxalate. Individuals with a history of oxalate-containing kidney stones should avoid overconsuming kale and other oxalate-containing greens.”
~ The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods
Since it’s possible to consume much larger quantities of vegetables in their juiced form than if you have to chew them up as in a salad for instance, you might just want to keep that in mind if you have problems with either of those two conditions, or ask your health care practitioner to be certain. But other than that kale is one of the best, most nutritious vegetables there is.
Is the apple vinegar neccessary? I cannot stand vinnegar and would love a healthy alternative to potato chips. thanks
Hi Matt. Thanks for the question! I normally can’t stand vinegar either, but I find a little bit of apple cider vinegar doesn’t bother me at all. You could definitely try just leaving the cider vinegar out. I find the vinegar/lemon juice cuts the heaviness of the oil somewhat. But I know that there are many people who digest oils much better than I do, and you may not even notice the difference.
As an alternative to the cider vinegar, you could use a bit of lemon juice or very fermented kombucha (if you have some).
I have lemons(and therefor the juice). As long as you can’t ‘taste’ the vinegar(like you would in say a vinegar based salad dressing) I’m ok with it. Just picked up some kale today(man is it cheap) and will give this a go. I am trying to become more healthy but still like to snack. I got my dehydrator to make dried fruits, jerky, and dry soaked nuts/seeds, but this and the mushroom recipe linked to it sound awesome. Will let you know how it comes out. THNX
Hey Matt, great you’ve got a dehydrator! Both this and the mushrooms are delicious. Do let me know how it comes out. I’ll be putting up more great dehydrator recipes soon.
Really you can’t taste, or smell the vinegar in this recipe. I loathe the smell and taste of vinegar, and I’m fine with this. But since you have them at home, and I’m guessing you’d have to buy the cider vinegar, give the lemon juice a try. I’m sure they will be beautiful. If they are mild tasting lemons I’d say try the same amount as the recipe calls for, if they are very tart lemons maybe halve the amount (unless you really love that lemon tartness like I do).
Quick update…am going to try the receipe tomorrow but before I do, I noticed your kale is much ‘flatter’ than mine. Mine looks like the garnish you see in a salad bar(very curly). Is there a major difference between the two?
Hi Matt, I know the one you mean, it’s really common in the USA. Here in NZ it’s really hard to find kale in the stores, so we grow our own. It’s a different variety of kale, but they should be very similar in nutritional value, taste, and end result.
Ours are an heirloom (non-hybridized) variety called Red Russian Kale, if you can grow your own, or get them from the farmer’s markets the heirloom varieties usually have higher nutritional value, but kale is a powerhouse of nutrients anyway, so whatever variety you get will be good (of course, organic is the best too, if you can).
The difference in the way they look is also because mine have flattened during the ‘massaging’ and dehydrating process. Yours probably will too, but they may still be curlier than mine.
I’ve been wanting to make kale chips, but I was wondering if dehydrating the kale will help eliminate the goitrogens. I’ve been having a difficult time finding an answer to this question. I was recently diagnosed with hypothyroidism, but am craving something crunchy. I cannot eat other types of chips because I am on a low-carb diet due to health reasons. Thanks for your help!
That’s a good question Catherine. I’ve not been able to see anything that suggests that dehydrating would reduce the goitrogens in the kale. I’ve experimented with various things to try to get that ‘potato chip’ crispiness, but so far the kale chips are the closest substitute I’ve found. But I did make a crispy mix with soaked sunflower seeds and grated carrot. I was trying to replicate Bhuja mix. I didn’t manage to exactly replicate the taste, but it was a nice crispy savory snack all the same. It would be easy to use different flavorings on the same basic recipe.
Have you tried Maca root powder for your hypothyroidism? It’s a powerful adaptogen that helps balance and support the endocrine system. Delicious too, great in smoothies. I also mix it into my raw chocolate recipes, it goes really well with raw cacao.