Beat the Heat: Simple Kale Salad

Kale is a green that I've only been eating for a few years.  I'd never heard of it before going vegan and now I absolutely love it!  Kale is packed with nutrients, including calcium, vitamin C, folic acid, and potassium (to name a few). I used to only put it in smoothies but now prefer to make spinach smoothies.  So I eat kale in other ways.  

Currently I have three favorite ways to eat kale - sauteed kale, kale chips, and kale salad.  In the summer when it's really hot, kale salad makes the most sense because you don't need to turn on the oven or use the stove.  Plus it's a nice change from the usual lettuce salad.

There are tons of recipes out there for kale salad, so although this isn't an exact recipe I found somewhere, it's sort of your basic recipe.  Some are more elaborate than others and may include tofu, avocado, or other chopped raw veggies.  I prefer to keep mine simple.

Kale Salad

Ingredients:

1 bunch of kale
Olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon

Bragg's Liquid Aminos

Nutritional yeast



Directions:

1. Tear the leaves into bite-sized pieces.  Place in a large bowl of water to rinse and remove any dirt.  Drain and allow to dry completely.  (I use my salad spinner.)

2. When dry, pour some olive oil into a bowl.  Dip your fingers into the oil, massage the leaves so they are covered with oil, and place them in a large bowl.  I find that you don't really need a whole lot of oil - maybe 1 tbsp or so.  Once you've done about half the leaves, you should be able to add the rest of the leaves and the ones that are already covered will transfer oil to the rest.  Just keep mixing and massaging until all the leaves are covered.

3. Squeeze the lemon juice over the kale.  Sprinkle with a few dashes of Bragg's.  Using tongs or your hands, mix everything together.  Cover and refrigerate.

4. When ready to serve, put kale into bowls and top with nutritional yeast.  Taste and add additional Bragg's, if needed.

Makes 4 side salads.

We had this last night for dinner.  The kale came from our Living Stones CSA.

Have you had kale salad?  How do you make yours?