Mediterranean Rice Bowl with Air-Fryer Chickpeas

What is Kale

The mustard family of crops, which also includes vegetables like broccoli and Brussels sprouts, contains cruciferous vegetables like kale, but it is most closely linked to cabbage. Like cabbage, it can withstand extreme heat and cold temperatures when growing and has extremely robust leaves. This translates quite well in the kitchen because you can consume leafy greens all year long with kale, which may contribute to its popularity.

Different Types of Kale

• Curly-Curly kale is, by far, the most common type of kale. It’s what you’ll get with a kale Caesar salad at a restaurant or what comes cleaned and chopped in a bag at the grocery store. It’s dark green with hearty, curly leaves and has woody, fibrous stems. Most kale recipes you find in books and on the internet are designed around curly kale.
• Tuscan– Most of the time, curly and Tuscan kale can be used interchangeably, although Tuscan kale tastes great in soups.
• Chinese– It can be difficult to locate Chinese kale (or Chinese broccoli) outside of Asian markets. It also doesn’t resemble curly or Tuscan kale. With curly and Tuscan kale, you wouldn’t eat the stems, but on Chinese kale, you should eat the stems together with the leaves. Chinese kale tastes best when cooked, although the other varieties can be eaten either raw or cooked.
• Red Russian Kale-Russian traders first introduced this vividly colored variety of kale to Canada in the 19th century. It has lush green fronds with purple highlights, and deep purple stems. It is one of the few types of kale that tastes well both cooked and raw.
• Baby– It is collected when the kale plant is young, just how it sounds. A small, delicate leaf that tastes best when eaten fresh in salads is the type’s distinguishing characteristic. Moreover, you can boil or wilt baby kale.

Cooking with Kale

Raw-

Kale is delicious in salads, but the only way to improve its flavor and eating experience is to massage the leaves with olive oil after chopping and removing the stems. Hence, two things happen: You may eat more of the leaves and absorb more of their nutrients because it is easy to chew and has a smaller volume.

Cooked-

Cooking kale is fantastic because, similar to when you massage the raw leaves, the leaves shrink but the nutrients remain, allowing you to obtain more nourishment from it. It withstands heat and can be kept straightforward by sautéing with broccoli or adding it to a gratin. The other choice is to wilt it, which falls somewhere in the middle of cooking and leaving it raw.

Snacks-

Kale chips can give you that savory snack satisfaction that potato chips do, only with more nutrients. As a bonus, they’re extremely easy to make. No massaging is required; just drizzle the leaves with olive oil and bake.

 Try our Kale Pesto Stuffed Mushrooms or our Kale and Quinoa Salad with Chicken.