Do You CRINGE About KALE? How to Add it to a Salad without Cringing!
Does the idea of eating a raw kale salad make you cringe? I’ll show you how to add kale to a salad and you will barely know it’s there!
I usually prefer Lacinato kale, which is also known as “dinosaur kale”, because I like the texture better. There is something about the curliness of curly kale that even makes ME cringe! When I make a salad out of kale as the only green, I will use Lacinato.
But I’m going to show you how to add curly kale to a lettuce salad!
You can either wash the kale leaves before or after stripping the leaves from the stem.
To strip the leaves, hold the end of the stem with one hand (let’s say your right hand). With the other hand (in this case, your left hand), place your left hand’s fingers around the stem just above your right hand. Gripping the step with your thumb on top and your fingers below the stem, glide your left hand up the stem while keeping hold of the stem. The leaves will pull cleanly off the stem!
In the photo above, I’ve used a large sharp knife to slice the kale cross-wise into small long pieces.
In this next step, I turned the kale 1/4 turn clockwise (or I could have turned the cutting board 1/4 turn clockwise!), and I used the knife again to slice the kale the other direction.
If any pieces look “large” to me, I slice those pieces even more. The idea is to make the pieces of kale very small.
In a bowl, I had already chopped up some Romaine lettuce. Then I added a handful of the chopped kale to the bowl.
I put the extra chopped kale into a sealed container in the refrigerator to use later in another salad!
I added a few more ingredients to the salad.
In this case, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, great northern beans, green onions, and artichoke hearts.
After adding some dressing I put it all in a salad bowl and added some raw pumpkin seeds (“pepitas”)!
Bon appétit!
