I had heard of Kale Chips from Arzeena’s facebook posting but had never try it before. Apparently, it is very easy to make. This is a very healthy snack. As a matter of fact, I would even call this a vegetarian chips because it is made of vegetables. I’m glad that Frank and Christina will be making Kale Chips in the South Arm Cooking Club for Seniors.
The Kale Chips have the texture of potato chips and taste like Japanese dried seaweed. It’s amazing what a quick roast in the oven can do to these greens!
Ingredients
- 1 bunch of kale, try to get those with flatter leaves for a crispier texture
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
 Preheat oven to 300F.
Wash kale and dry thoroughly. Remove the center stem and chop leaves into 3-inch pieces. Toss with olive oil in a large bowl. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss again to coat. |
 Arrange leaves in a single layer on a baking sheet, and bake for 20 minutes, until completely crisp. |
 Turn the kale half way through. Watch carefully to make sure that the chips do not burn. |
This is such a simple recipe. Do they taste good?
absolutely yummy!
Oh, I tried making these and they are just fantastic! Thanks for sharing the recipe.
I started making these a couple of years ago under a broiler. I can’t remember what prompted me to put kale on a cookie sheet in the oven, but I’m glad I did. I find the curly kale crisps up best. I guess it’s personal preference.
Kale chips don’t store well – unless you store them with a dessicant.
@marciaw: what a good idea; using a dessicant! Now I can re-use those little packets that seem to be packed into “everything”.
Hi Suanne. What’s Kale in cantonese? Sorry to bother you on the translation again.. Thanks
Hi Michelle:
I don’t know Chinese at all but here is what Google Translate describes Kale in Chinese: 羽衣甘藍 or yǔ yī gān lán.
The website for Google Translate is http://translate.google.com/
Enjoy!
Ben
Hi Michelle, I have bought kale in a Chinese groceries store and never bother to know the Chinese name. But I did a check on the internet and found it call ‘gum lan’.
The asian green “gai lan” is known as chinese kale or chinese brocolli, but I don’t think the kale here is gai lan.
Found a good photo of gai lan.
http://wanderingchopsticks.blogspot.com/2008/05/steamed-gai-lan-chinese-broccoli.html
Hi Ben & Suanne, thanks for the tips. I dun know if i can find Kale or “gan lan” in this part of the world. But they do look like coral lettuce here.
Alright!!! I fixed the database already so that it can now handle Chinese characters in the comments field. Let me try it one more time … Kale is 羽衣甘藍 (yǔ yī gān lán) while Spinach is 菠菜 (bō cài). Not that I can read it but am sure Google Translate is correct! he he he … Ben
Thanks for sharing the recipe.
I tried making these and they are just fantastic!
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Thanks a lot Ben and Suanne, this is a wonderful recipe!! I’ve tried it out a couple of times and I can totally eat them like chips 🙂 You guys have inspired me to recently start a food blog so maybe I’ll write a post on making these kale chips!(using your recipe of course):)
The vegetable we call kale in the west is not known at all in China. Of course you can buy Kale in an American based Chinese grocery store! You can buy cranberries in an American based Chinese grocery store at Thanksgiving, but you will never see a fresh cranberry in any grocery store or outdoor fruit market in China. I even saw kale once in a grocery store in Shanghai all washed and platic-wrapped — but it was imported from Australia.
The plant shown in the photo at
http://wanderingchopsticks.blogspot.com/2008/05/steamed-gai-lan-chinese-broccoli.html (I had to load it through a proxy server since all western blogs are filtered out of the Internet over here)
is called 油菜, yóu cài (pronounced like “yo tseye”), meaning “oil vegetable dish” in Mandarin (the official national language of China). It is called rape in English. One Canadian variety of it that has a lower acid content is called Canola. The seed of it is an important source of both industrial machine oil and cooking oil. It is a popular (and cheap) vegetable green in all regions of China, but I have never heard anyone call it anything but “yóu cài” or “qīn cài” (green vegetable dish). In southern China and Shanghai, most people don’t even know any names for green leafy vegetables other than spinach and the various cabbages, so they all get the name “green vegetable dish” including the one westerners call bok choy / pak choy (like Beijing / Peking).
The botanical name for kale is Brassica oleracea Acephala.
The botanical name for bok choy is Brassica rapa, subspecies pekinensis and chinensis.
The botanical name for rape (yóu cài) is Brassica napus, but it is not the same as napa cabbage.
It gets even more confusing when we find that they are all related to cabbage, that napa cabbage gets its name from the Japanese “nap pa” (“vegetable leaf”), that napa cabbage is always called Chinese cabbage by all Chinese when they speak English, and that bok choy is often called Chinese cabbage by Americans. Got it? I didn’t think so. I know these correctly by their standard Chinese names, but when I am in the U.S., who knows what I will get when the menu says “Chinese cabbage” or “Chinese broccoli”. Incidentally, broccoli (the real one) is quite common in China. I am cooking a broccoli and spinach cream soup as I type.