Two weeks into our CSA and we are inundated with greens. Which is great, because it forces us to eat them. It also forces us to find things to do with them!

When our first week’s kale started to get a little yellow, I needed to find a way to cook it all quickly. Hence, my first foray into kale chip making. I used this recipe, with a couple of alterations. 

Ingredients:

• kale, washed, dried, and cut or torn into small pieces
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• crushed red pepper flakes, to taste

The process is quite simple. First, you preheat the oven to 350F. Then, once the kale is prepared, you toss it with the olive oil, salt, and the crushed red pepper flakes, and lay them down on a cookie sheet. (The Allrecipes recipe I used recommended lining the cookie sheet with parchment paper. This seems like a very good idea, except we don’t have any. I think I may buy some the next time I remember while at the store). Finally, you bake them for about 10 minutes, taking care not to let the chips burn.

This is how I laid the kale out. If you know how to make kale chips, you’ll see I made a classic rookie error here: letting the kale pieces touch each other. As I learned, this was a bad call, as the kale ended up cooking unevenly: the kale touching other kale stayed green and moist, while the kale laid out separately started to burn. 

At any rate, a cook who insists on perfection the first time she prepares a dish is probably a cook who never learns anything new. Though the texture was hit-or-miss, the resulting chips tasted great, tasting somewhat like a potato chip, though with an earthier, more bitter flavor.

I served them with homemade bean burgers. All in all, an excellent kale dish to add to the repertoire.