Kale recipes: more than just hearty
What the asparagus is in the spring, the kale is in the winter: When we think of the curly cabbage, we immediately think of a hearty meal with pinkel, grützwurst or smoked pork and potatoes. We traditionally cook the winter vegetables with ingredients like onions, salt and bacon, but it can also be different!
Since some years ago there was a real hype about "kale" and its valuable nutrients in the USA, we Germans are also rediscovering cabbage – and now eat kale instead of Pinkel, Kassler, Mettenden or bacon vegetarian with pasta, as a soup or Salad and even drink it in green smoothies.
Eat kale all year round
So there are many opportunities to bring the popular winter vegetables to the table more often – even outside of the usual kale season. Because: did you know that you can actually buy kale all year round? When Kale, black cabbage or Russian red cabbage it is in season twelve months a year. By the way, kale is also known as brown cabbage or kale. Its Latin name is "Brassica oleracea var. Sabellica L.".
The fact that we still eat kale mainly in winter is due to both the growing conditions and the special taste. Because the cold gives the otherwise bitter cabbage a pleasant sweetness. One of the reasons kale is so healthy is because it isn't contains only a few calories (49 kcal per 100 g), but can also boast the following ingredients:
- Vitamin A
- vitamin C
- Vitamin K
- potassium
- magnesium
How to Prepare Kale Properly!
But all the good ingredients in kale are lost if the cabbage is not prepared gently. And this is the best way to prepare kale:
- Ideally, the kale is blanched. The rich green color as well as the most important vitamins and nutrients are retained. How to blanch kale: Dip the cleaned vegetables in salted boiling water for 2-4 minutes and then soak them in ice water. For example, we recommend it in our recipe for lukewarm kale salad.
- Another gentle preparation variant is thatSteaming. Whether in the sieve insert or in the steamer: It is important that the vegetables only cook in hot steam and not in the water itself.
- Steaming is easier, which is an intermediate stage between cooking and steaming. The fresh vegetables are heated in a closed pot for about eight minutes with a little water and a lot of steam, which preserves the healthy ingredients of the kale. We use this type of preparation in our kale recipe for cabbage and chard vegetables and also for the risotto with kale, bacon and pear in our recipe series.
Here you will find more tips on how to prepare kale and how to freeze kale.
Kale recipes are often seasoned with salt, pepper, a pinch of sugar, a little mustard and nutmeg. Allspice and caraway go well with the dish!
Kale with a difference
But of course you can – depending on the dish – also boil and fry. However, you should make sure that the water does not get too hot and that you use as little fat as possible. Cooking time when cooking is around 90 minutes. If you want to thicken the kale a bit, you can add oatmeal.
Raw So far, kale has rarely been on our table. If the leaves have been washed off well, they can also be eaten raw as a salad or put in a green smoothie. Of course, it becomes more digestible if you blanch it.
This variant of the preparation of kale is also exciting: bake! For homemade kale chips, lemon juice is poured over the cabbage leaves and then baked. We are sure: you have never eaten kale like this before. Have fun feasting!