I have made kale chips a few times – I bought Lacinato Kale, cut it up, sprayed with olive oil, salted, and baked on a cookie sheet. Those were satisfying little flavor bombs but a little hard to eat, because they were like crunchy little pieces of cellophane, hard to pick up, hard to grasp.
Recently my neighbors bought some of the new kale chips from Brad’s Raw Chips – he is into the new “raw foods” movement, so he creates the chips by dessication at a warm temperature, and he can claim that the chips are “raw” and uncooked. What they bought were the “nasty hot” version and I was totally hooked. The texture of Brad’s chips are completely different from what I had made. Each chip has several layers and is kind of wrinkly. But what is most interesting is the intense flavor of the added spices.
I am cat sitting for these neighbors and I ate all their chips so I had to go looking for more. I found a knock-off brand but either Brad’s or the knock offs are $7.50 for a little plastic box containing 2.5 ounces. SO I am looking to reverse engineer these things. I care not one bit about the raw-ness, and I don’t want to bother with the dessication. So I am thinking 1) blanch a batch of kale in simmering water, and maybe stir in flavor ingredients at that point. 2) make a big messy layer of semi-cooked kale on a cookie sheet. Perhaps sprinkle that with cayenne or togarashi. Bake until crisp. 3) cut into “chips” and save about $50 on Brad’s Kale Chips.
FWIW I don’t watch morning TV but on the Brad’s website they had videos of Hoda and Kathy Lee going on and on about these chips. Evidently Hoda suddenly became “regular” after eating a pile of kale chips with hummus and she is just endlessly enthusiastic about the clinical side. I am mainly interested in their deliciousness.
http://www.bradsrawchips.com/
The point of posting this topic is to ask – has anyone tried to do what I want to do, make your own kale chips (like Brad’s)??
Got advice for me??
I’ve looked at recipes as well but have never made them. They seem to fall into two basic styles as you said: sprayed with oil and baked or coated with a raw marinade and dehydrated. The commercial ones I’ve seen are generally the raw variety and, as you point out, they cost a small fortune.
But I also have seen some suggestions that you can take the basic recipe for any of the raw ones and then finish them in a low oven (some recipes even say a 200 degree oven with the door ajar) as opposed to using a dehydrator. Of all the choices, that seems like the best of both worlds since I’d think they’d be less like cellophane.
In any case, I’d love to hear what method you choose and how they turn out.
So I should look online, should have realized there would be stuff out there. To me, these are brand new so it didn’t occur to me.
FWIW the ones my neighbors had – the Nasty Hot Kale at the top of the nutrition label says “Jalapeño and Vegan Cheese” but they must have changed the formula because the ingredients list says: Kale, Red Bell Pepper, Cashews, Sunflower Seeds, Jalapeño, Nutritional Yeast, Himalayan Sea Salt, Cayenne Pepper.
No “Vegan Cheese” unless Vegan Cheese = “nutritional yeast.” I was eating the chips with toasted salted sunflower seeds and the combination was really good. Makes sense, the chips contain that flavor.
An ounce of chips (half a package) has 141 calories. How can it be that high with no oil? I suppose there are a lot of nuts and seeds…
This looks nice. And Heather is nice too.
http://www.ifood.tv/recipe/baked-kale-chips
This blog is trying to do exactly what I am trying to do – scientists prize negative data!
The vegans use cashews for “cheese”, “mayo” to make things taste richer. Pretty delicious but definitely not low cal.
Dehydrated foods often seem high in calories but it’s partly because they’re concentrated since they have a low moisture content, but cashews and sunflower seeds have pretty significant amounts of fat and calories too. As Tom points out, that’s why a lot of raw food/vegans use cashews to enrich foods. I use cashews to make no-oil added salad dressings. It still has fat but it’s significantly lower fat than pure oil.
The vegan cheese is likely cashew cream and nutritional yeast. That combo works well in things like this.
The recipe I’ve been looking at is here http://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/2010/04/raw-vegan-kale-chips-making-our-own.html but I haven’t tried it yet (and I might add some hot pepper to it as well). You need to scroll about a third of the way through the page to get to the recipe.
Thanks Rachel, this is a fun read, the little girl reminds me of Nolita. And these chips do look a lot like Brad’s.
Italians will add a bit of " nutmeg " in cooking greens. Just putting it out their as an optional spice idea.
Good luck
My son (14 yo) has these down to a science. He sprinkles with regular old Kraft Parmesan and red pepper flakes and they come out perfectly crispy, spicy and delicious.
Milton – 200 degree oven? Dehydrator? Sounds nice and simple.