— Maria Allen

I make kale kale chips pretty often. My kids actually love them as well. Um, typically what I do for kale chips is I'll actually soak cashews. Um, I usually do it overnight and drain off the water and then blend them up with the seasonings or the flavors that I want to do. Um, and I'll kind of switch up the flavors depending on my audience. Like if it's my kids, I might do something just a kind of a simple like lemon juice and garlic, or I might do something that kind of replicates like a ranch, you know, like a dried ranch, um, to be able to put into it as well. Um, but I kind of switch all those up a little bit. And then what I'll do is I'll take my kale and I make sure to bring it into, um, you know, kind of chip size pieces. So, uh, relatively small and um, you wanna make sure to get the stems out of them so you can just grab the stem and then put your fingers like this and it'll pull the stem right off of the leaves as well. And then I put, um, the kale into a bowl, and then I'll mix in the cashew cream and, uh, really hand massage it into it all. And then afterward I'll put it into a dehydrator. Usually it takes about 24 hours into dehydrator at about 160. I do know people that make them in the oven as well too. You just wanna keep it at a very low temperature, almost as low as your oven can go. Or if you have a gas stove, some people just use the pilot light on it. Um, depending on how long you know it, it can take, uh, kind of a long time just to the pilot method. So I actually love using the dehydrator, so, um, that's usually what I do for kids. For adults, I might add something like Chipotle powder or maybe even something like truffle powder or something like that into it as well too, um, you know, for adult flavor profiles as well. But a little bit of acid, like a lemon juice goes a long way in it. It actually helps to be able to keep, uh, the bitterness away from it. And then the cashews add a nice fat to it as well and, um, you know, kinda help to add some of that crunch to it.