These Bold Tart and Spicy Kale Chips are Extreme!
I tested these "x-treme" kale chips on a few people who normally would not want to be caught dead eating something as "foo foo" as kale chips. They ate them all, one even ate them in public at work, which is a big deal. Adjust the spicy heat up or down to your liking, these savory chips are all gone too soon. I've taken to making double batches now and have bought additional trays for the dehydrator. Can't wait for Dad to try these, he's always liked kale--way before it was cool.
Servings: 4
Equipment
- food dehydrator
Ingredients
- 4 T tahini I use this for way more than hummus...
- 1 lemon Juice of one lemon*
- 2 T nutritional yeast flakes
- 1 T Bragg's Liquid Aminos Or alternative**
- 1 t Frank's Red Hot Or your favorite hot sauce, and use more if you wish
- 1/2 tsp smoked hot paprika regular paprika is good too
- 1/2 tsp honey just a teeny bit, optional but delicious
- mineral or sea salt adjust to taste
- 1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper Or more, I use a LOT more***
- 1 bunch fresh kale green, red, or purple kale
Instructions
- Any color of curly kale will work well for this recipe, so choose the one that looks the best in the grocery store that day, you want the leaves to be strong and stiff, not wilted at all.
- In a very large bowl, whisk together the tahini, lemon juice, nutritional yeast, Braggs Liquid Aminos or alternative, hot sauce, paprika, honey, salt and pepper. Taste and adjust seasonings. This should have a strong, but balanced flavor.
- Wash and dry the kale, use a salad spinner or do what I do and put the washed kale in a muslin bag then go outside and sling the water out of it by whirling the bag wildly around in both directions.
- Remove the kale stems and break off the leaves into large bite size pieces. Place in the bowl and take a fair amount of time mixing in the leaves and making sure all are evenly coated. I do this with very clean hands (and forearms). The more even you can get the coating, the tastier all your hard work will turn out to be. When all leaves are evenly coated and no more sauce remains in the bottom of the bowl, place the leaves in your dehydrator racks with a mesh layer in a single layer with minimal overlapping.
- Use as many racks as it takes – for reference if I make a double batch it takes 4.5 racks in my L’Equip Filter Pro dehydrator. Set the temperature (if you can) for 125 degrees (118 degrees if you want to be raw-food purist about it, never mind the toasted tahini) for 11-12 hours. I usually set this up to run overnight and into the morning. That lets me take care of morning responsibilities then enjoy the chips while bagging the rest of them up for later.
- Removing the chips from the dehydrator without eating them all is the most difficult part of this recipe!
- *as in my other recipes I’ve taken to juicing lemons by rolling the whole lemon a few times on a cutting board, cutting the lemon in half then crushing each half by hand. If you’ve been training your grip, this should be no problem, and you have the added bonus of not having to wash a citrus juicer later. Fewer items to clean is a huge motivator for some people. Get CRUSHING!
- **This is a strange ingredient I have enjoyed for many years, while you can substitute soy sauce or tamari, I find that the Braggs has an extra element of umami (savory, meaty flavothat works so well with certain recipes.
- ***I’m very heavy handed with the pepper here, which is very good with the lemon.
Notes
This week, the purple kale looked amazing as you can see here:
