Honey Kale Chips Recipe

After making Kale Baby Mash with most of the kale I had accumulated over three weeks in my CSA, I used the larger leaves for some Kale Chips. I decided to try a Honey Kale Chips recipe I had seen that used a dehydrator instead, since I had some Dino and purple (Red?) kale, which I learned from previous experience tend to burn more quickly. So hopefully no burning on the dehydrator!

Purple and green Dino Kale
and some kind of wiffly purple kale.

But I ended up just baking them anyway. Oh well.

Honey Kale Chips

Ingredients:
2 bunches Dino Kale, rinsed and dried
1/4 c olive oil
1 tsp salt
1/2 lemon, juiced (or 1.5-2 Tbsp lemon juice)
1 Tbsp honey

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 F

Step 1: Tear kale leaves into roughly 2-inch pieces. Discard stems.

Combine kale, oil, salt, and lemon juice in a large zip-top baggie. Seal and massage the mixture for around 3 minutes.

Step 2: Add the honey, re-seal the bag, and massage gently for another 3 minutes. Kale mixture should be roughly half the volume you started with.

Step 3: Lay leaves out flat on parchment-paper-lined baking sheets, with little to no overlap.

Bake at 350 F for 8 to 15 minutes. Start checking every 2 minutes after the initial 8. Remove chips that feel firm and crunchy each time you check. You can store covered in the fridge for at least a week.

The Verdict

Even checking them regularly, I still had a lot of them get overdone, but Z didn't seem to mind. I thought the salty-lemony-honey taste was a little odd, but she loved them, and kept asking for more! So other than them being a pain in the as...tronaut to make, they're a win!

I may have added too much oil, lemon juice and honey, since I wasn't sure how much a "bunch" of dino kale was supposed to be, and I certainly wasn't using two bunches of anything for this. So I kind of eyeballed it and added a little less of everything (except the salt. We're salt fiends here!) The honey made them all shiny-looking, and a little sticky, but again, Z just adored them, so I'll have to muster up the energy to make these again! And maybe I'll try baking at 300 F for longer, to avoid the brown burny taste the overdone ones had. Not that she cared.