Road Trip Snacks Part 2: Kale Chips

Chris & I planted a row of curly kale back in August that we knew we probably wouldn't get to harvest much of before moving.  We cut a couple of large bunches by the end of November and it looked nice and hearty for the next community gardener coming into our old garden plot.  Bea thought she had finished using up all our kale but found some leftovers during project clean-out-the-fridge.  It still looked pretty good, so we made a batch of kale chips for our roadtrip!  This recipe was adapted from the Kitchn's “Snack Recipe: Cheesy Yet Vegan Kale Chips".

You'll need:

• 3/4 cup cashews
• 1 bunch kale, with stems removed
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1 tablespoon Bragg's Liquid Aminos
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
• 2 tablespoons of lemon juice
• A food dehydrator (preferred method)
• A small food processor

Step 1: Soak the cashews

Cover the cashews with water and let them soak for at least an hour.

Step 2: Chop the kale

While cashews are soaking, remove the stems from the kale, and chop the leaves into bite-sized pieces.  The kale will shrink as it dehydrates so cut it a bit bigger than you want the final chips to be.

Step 3: Make the sauce

Add the garlic, Braggs, oil, and nutritional yeast to a food processor.  Give it a few quick spins, enough to chop the garlic and combine the ingredients into a sauce.  After an hour of soaking, drain the cashews and add them to the food processor.  Run the processor until the cashews are ground into a slightly liquid paste and thoroughly combined with the rest of the sauce.  Add more lemon juice a teaspoon at a time if you need to thin it out -- it should be like a thick salad dressing.

Step 4: Combine

In a large bowl, combine kale and cashew sauce, making sure the kale is evenly coated.  (If you're impatient, this makes a great raw salad if you want to eat it right now!)

Step 5: Dehydrate

Place kale pieces on the racks of your food dehydrator, allowing a little space between pieces so they don't overlap.  Use multiple racks if needed -- ours took up 4 racks.  Set the dehydrator for 135ºF and run it until the chips are crisp and completely dry -- cooking time will depend on your dehydrator's settings, but it should take between 2-4 hours.

If you don't have a food dehydrator, you can set your oven for the lowest setting (like WARM not bake).  Depending on your oven, you may possibly even need to prop the door open to keep the heat as low as possible.  The goal is really to keep these chips as “raw" as possible by NOT cooking them, so you need the heat below 150ºF for sure and lower if you can get it to work in a conventional oven.  The cooking time will vary based on the temperature you can achieve, but check very regularly so they don't turn into ash!

When using a dehydrator, the risk of overcooking is diminished so you just need to check on the chips periodically -- taste one for done-ness about every hour or so.  When they're light and crunchy, they're ready to eat!

These kale chips will keep in an air tight container for up to a week, but if 2 people have the container sitting between them, the chips will disappear very quickly!