Chop it up into a lentil soup!

Saute them for a bit just until the pan gets all hot, then throw in about a half cup of water and cover the pan. This sort of flash-steams the greens and they end up crisper than plain sauteing.

Disclaimer: this is what I do for Chinese broccoli, never actually tried on kale. But they're all in the same family, yes?

Here's a recipe for Grilled Coconut Kale

Melt 3 cups of coconut milk in a pot till it's mixed and luke warm. Transfer to a bowl and add 1 tablespoon salt, 1/4 c lemon juice, 1 teaspoon cayenne and 1 tsp paprika.

Remove the stalks from the Kale and cut into 6" pieces. Stir the kale into the coconut milk and marinade for upto 4 hours in the fridge.

grill the Kale on your bbq or stove top cast iron for 30-45 seconds on each side.


note: I have not tried this yet but plan to next week.

Disclaimer: this is what I do for Chinese broccoli, never actually tried on kale. But they're all in the same family, yes?

That's what I do for chard (and I love it that way), but I tried it on the kale last week and it was still rubbery and weird.

OK, I retract. I think maybe I was underestimating the amount of oil and water that they need.

I ended up making this recipe, minus the pancetta and onion bit -- basically, sautee the garlic and red pepper in more olive oil than I usually use, add the chopped kale, add much more broth than I usually use. And I liked the idea of letting the liquid boil off at the end.

So that's what it's doing right now. And I tasted a bit and it's yummy.

And the lentil soup and coconut kale recipes sound lovely, and I will try them in the future; I was looking for something that I could do in less than 30min. as a side for dinner tonight.

Try looking for lacinato kale. It's a lot less tough and stringy than most kale and never cooks up bitter. (Sometimes called dinosaur kale, for reasons unbeknownst to me. As opposed to mammal kale...?)

For regular kale and other fall-ish greens, try blanching. Throw washed and chopped greens into a big pot of boiling salted water. After two or three minutes, dump everything into a colander in the sink and toss it with a tray of ice cubes. Drain and either sautée as spinach, or freeze/refrigerate. It's a bit of a pain for one meal but well worth processing in a batch and storing up, all squirrel-style.

I usually just process it up into flakes and add it to soups, sauces, a lot of things, stealth style. Adds a lot of nutrition.

The kale I had was Russian kale:

≡ Click to see image ≡

which is my favorite (and it turned out very well! I ended up throwing in some lemon zest and juice, as well, which was yummy).

I think I remember reading that the lacinato kale, which is Italian, was first imported to the US by someone who thought the leaves' texture looked like dinosaur skin, hence "dinosaur kale." But they couldn't make the green catch on, no one would buy it from them. A marketing-savvy friend suggested changing the name to "Tuscan kale," and sales skyrocketed.

Kale needs to cook for a while, it is a lot tougher than swiss chard or other greens, so if you like a crisp green, I'd switch.
Here's my kale recipe if you want to try it!

The Dutch cuisine is so mundane that boerenkoolstamppot (boiled potatoes and -kale mashed together) is one of our national dishes.
Not so bad with rookworst (similar to kielbasa).

Vetiver: It's called dinosaur kale because it looks like it might be the skin of a prehistoric critter.

Funny, occhi, i thought it was your past kale mention that kickstarted my cooked greens explorations.

Funny, occhi, i thought it was your past kale mention that kickstarted my cooked greens explorations.

Hee. It may have been. I love kale. It's just that I normally throw it into white bean soup, where it cooks perfectly. I've been stymied lately in trying to figure out a non-soup kale-based side dish.

Lots of kaley goodness here.

Recipes open as .pdfs.

Eat More Kale!

I've been wanting to try this recipe for the counterintuitive kale chips.

I often saute kale with garlic and crushed red pepper. I usually blanch it first, which makes it soft like chard.

Portuguese kale soup is how I fell in love with kale.

Kale is delicious in soup. Potatoes, chicken broth, sausage & kale in the crockpot = delish.