Kale Salt {and Kale Chips}

Of all the things that I’ve ever posted about, if you only make one recipe, try one thing, it has to be this kale salt. Kale salt? Indeed, it’s revolutionary! It’s ahhhhmazing! It’s tasty! It’s healthy! Folks, this salt is so incredible that I would consider marketing it! As far as I know there isn’t anything like it anywhere, go ahead and Google it. This is the only place you’ll see this unique food! Do I sound like an infomercial?

Two ingredients = two tons of flavor. The idea was sparked by a breakfast I recently had; I cooked up an over easy egg and a couple of pieces of bacon. I thought to myself that this wasn’t exactly the healthiest breakfast, if I had some kale it would be, because kale automatically makes everything healthy. Just like bacon makes everything taste better. I was joking with myself but then I thought, what if I could add kale to nearly everything? The only other food item that goes into everything is…salt.

I seem to have an attraction to different salts, in my pantry is kosher, table, sel gris, fleur de sel, sea salt, smoked sea salt, dill pickle salt, pickling salt, cabernet salt and truffle salt (not to mention a variety of seasoning salts) and truffle salt. Holy cow, I didn’t realize how many kinds of salt I had, I might need an intervention. Back to the kale salt…

The day before I had just harvested a bunch of kale from my garden; we had already eaten plenty of fresh kale so it was time for a change. I made some kale chips and was planning on crunching some up to dust popcorn with, when I got this idea, what if the kale and salt were all in one? How easy would that be to do my popcorn or add to my unhealthy breakfast? I still had a bunch of kale in the fridge that I hadn’t cooked yet so I very lightly coated the kale, baked it the same as I do for chips and let it cool. Once it was cool I placed the chips into a gallon zipper lock bag, sealed it and used my hands to crumble it. Within seconds it was almost a powder.

For my salt portion, I selected kosher salt because it was similar in size to the powdered kale. I used grits as my base food for testing. I started with a 1:2 ratio of salt to kale, but the kale was too predominant, I still yearned to grab a salt shaker. With a 2:1 salt to kale ratio all the flavor of the kale was masked and I might as well have just had salt. Oddly enough a 1:1 salt to kale ratio was perfect. It was attractive with equal amounts of kosher salt and kale. The salt, was naturally the first to tantalize my taste buds, as soon as the salt faded I was left with that slightly pungent (but pleasant) kale flavor. Grits and kale, love it!

Was this truly healthy though? I hopped over to sparkrecipes.com (I use their recipe calculator all the time). Based on a 2000 calorie a day diet: for ¼ teaspoon it was only 3.9 calories, 0 Fat, contained 31.1 mg of potassium, 21.5% Vitamin A, 14% Vitamin C plus a slew of other vitamins (but they are fairly small percentages so I didn’t list them). Naturally if you are watching your sodium, it is a salt and therefore high in sodium.

Then I had to try it on some eggs…

And a baked potato…

Let’s look closer at this baked potato that was not only sprinkled on top with kale salt, it was also oiled and rubbed with kale salt before baking.

And cookies! Surprisingly delicious, with the sweet and salty; of course the cookies are made with bacon fat so that’s just another plus. Here’s the link to the biscochitos.

You know you want some!

I can imagine that it would be fantabulous on cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, in soups and sauces, mac n cheese, sprinkled on corn on the cob or cooked carrots or how about rimmed on a Bloody Mary glass. The possibilities are endless! Plus this salt is a great way of taking a huge amount of kale and compressing it into a small amount. It also might be a good way to sneak in kale into some veggie hater’s food.

I beg you to try it, it’s so easy and a delight to eat. Because the kale is dried and mixed with salt, if stored in a tightly sealed container I would think that it would also have a very long shelf life. I think I’ll make a batch of it to store at the cabin, it also seems like a good survival supplement (a tasty one too), just in case we ever get snowed in and have to break down and eat that powdered dried food…

Because I’ve never posted a recipe for kale chips, here’s how I do mine.

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