Best Kale Salad Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How do you make kale taste better? ›

“Minced garlic, olive oil, and salt are also simple ingredients that can transform the flavor of a bitter kale dish. ' “Cutting the stem of kale and marinating it with olive oil and salt can help reduce bitterness.”

Curly Kale Is the Best Type of Kale for Salads

Curly kales, as the name suggests, have frilly-edged leaves and long stems. If you're ready to grow this variety yourself, a major bonus is that curly kales are often more resistant to pests than other types.

Bitter greens are leafy greens or vegetables that have an intense bitter flavor profile. They include kale, mustard greens, collards, turnip greens, broccoli rabe, radicchio, chicory, and endive. The bitterness comes from chemical compounds called glucosinolates that can be found in the Brassica family.

Adding salt and squeezing lemon make a big difference by removing bitterness. Adding some spicy or sweet flavors may help tame the strong flavor of bitter kale.

Mix with sweets: combining kale with naturally sweet-tasting foods such as fruits, or sweet-tasting spices can help mask some of its bitterness. Add a touch of salt or spices: spicy and salty flavors can also tame some of kale's strong bitterness. Try cooking kale in vegetable broth with a touch of chili flakes.

Steaming is a better option than boiling because you don't lose as many nutrients with this cooking method, according to Gray. “You're not giving it heat treatment for very long, so it's closest to raw that you can get and you still are cooking it to some degree,” she said.

You'll feel the kale start to break down almost immediately. Keep going until it's soft and wilted-looking—it loses a bit of volume in this process—and has given off a little juice. Then add the rest of the dressing and whatever else you're putting in the salad. Oh, and this is a widely applicable technique.

RELATED: Believe It Or Not, Kale Actually Lives Up To All Of Its Hype—Here's Why. Manganiello says you can eat kale every day, just don't overdo it. She recommends one to two servings maximum of kale per day, leaving room for other healthy foods that provide an assortment of nutrients.

Kale has the buzz. But collard greens — kale's first cousin — are still uncommon. Standard fare in the American South, in the rest of the nation many are unfamiliar with these large, flat, oval, white-ribbed leaves. Yet they are nutritional superstars equal to if not surpassing kale!

Soaking kale in warm water can also work to tenderize it. The dip into the water will also serve to clean it in preparation for a favorite kale recipe. This technique will help to improve the flavor after you have chopped it on your board with a sharp kitchen knife.

Can you eat kale raw in a salad? ›

Often labeled as a superfood, kale is one of the healthiest and most nutrient-dense foods you can eat. This leafy green comes in a variety of colors, shapes, and textures. It's often eaten raw in salads and smoothies but can also be enjoyed steamed, sautéed, boiled, or baked.

Cutting the stems crossways shortens the fibres, much as with a tough steak, making them perfectly edible and preventing waste. Cut this way, the stems can be cooked in the same way as the rest of the leaf: sauteed, boiled or steamed.

But, you can also tame the flavors by adding a little sweetness to the mix too, such as a pinch of white or brown sugar or even a bit of honey or other liquid sweeteners like agave nectar or maple syrup. Just be sure to add in a little at a time when cooking so your kale doesn't come out too sweet.

It's hearty and tough, for one, but it also boasts a bittersweet pungency that some find off-putting. In cooked applications (like our Roasted Kale with Garlic, Red Pepper Flakes, and Lemon) that assertive flavor is no big deal—kale's flavor mellows significantly with cooking.

Adding something that's a bit tangy and sweet will help to balance out the earthy bitterness of the kale. Using lemon and/or vinegar will also help to break it down a bit more.

Does massaging kale make it less bitter? The process of softening kale also helps to reduces the vegetable's bitterness by releasing bitter compounds. Some claim that massaged kale therefore needs to be rinsed before eating, since the bitter compounds may stay on the leaves after they have been released.