Baked Zucchini Chips

These chips took a lot of time and effort for so little reward. Although, now I can say that I ate two zucchinis in five minutes. I'll need a lot more trays, oven racks, or a food dehydrator to do this recipe again. My all-time favorite way to eat zucchini is breaded and deep fried. 

Zucchini chips: slice, place, bake!

Preheat oven to 225 degrees F.

Ingredients

organic zucchinis, as many as will fit in the palm of your hand
a pinch of salt, less than 1/4 tsp
1 tbsp olive oil

Directions

Use the cutting blade disc with the food processor, this is faster and easier than using a mandoline slicer. The only advantage the mandoline has over the food processor is the width size of the vegetable.

On a parchment paper-lined baking tray, place zucchini rounds side by side until the tray is full. Repeat with other trays. Use a pastry brush to brush each round with a little bit of olive oil. Sprinkle salt on top, if you want. You can always add more salt after these finish baking.

If your oven heats evenly, you shouldn't need to rotate the trays.

Bake for two hours, or until everything looks dry and lightly browned. Use a spatula to remove the chips from the trays to a plate or airtight container, should the chips actually last that long.

Kale Chips, the easier way

Nearly year-round, both Trader Joe's and Costco carry bags of pre-washed, ready-to-use fresh kale leaves. This takes a lot of the prep work for these chips away since all you need to do now is remove whatever stems are still attached to the leaves. By the end of summer, the stems are usually thick and woody and not terribly good for eating.

Fresh kale ready to be baked in the oven

In two 5-quart mixing bowls, separate one Trader Joe's bag of fresh kale leaves into equal portions. With each bowl, you'll be able to spread the leaves in a single layer across two 17" x 11" rimmed cookie sheets. 

Add a teaspoon of olive oil to each bowl and work the oil onto the leaves with your hands.

If you are going to lightly salt these, use less than 1/4 tsp of regular table salt or sea salt. A little bit of salt goes a long way. I used a Himalayan pink salt that I ground into a finer texture using a mortar and pestle. You don't have to do this. I just wanted to see what it would taste like. 

Kale chips, ready to eat!

Bake in a pre-heated 350 degrees F oven for 9-10 minutes.

Krispy Kale Khips

I can't believe packages of these sell for $5 for a 1.2 oz bag at the grocery store. Kale is in season almost all year in the PNW. Best pricing at a grocery store will be about a dollar a bunch for fresh green kale during mid-summer. Red and multicolored kale is slightly pricier, but it doesn't matter which variety is used for these "chips". Definitely remove all the tough 'ribs' from the leaves before shredding them by hand. The end product is ideally light, crispy and slightly salty.

[edit: later that day] I weighed the remainder of what I didn't nibble on, and it would appear that a bunch of fresh kale (roughly 1 lb) yields about 2 oz crispy kale chips.

I did three batches with a head of kale; largely because only a third of the leaves would fit on the baking sheet at one time. I found that using a 9x13 glass baking dish did not work so well in evenly drying the leaves. As for flavorings, here's what I used:

• batch #1: coarsely ground Himalayan pink salt with Mrs. Dash tomato/garlic/basil seasoning
• batch #2: lightly sprinkled with black truffle oil salt
• batch #3: lightly sprinkled sea salt

Batch #1 came out way too salty for my taste but light and crunchy. The process is pretty simple and the messiest part is preparing the leaves for baking. Taking time to massage oil into the individual leaves helps the "chips" attract salt and/or spices, or at least stick on better.

As for plating, I suggest a parchment cone in a large glass tumbler or a decorative rectangular dish.

Ingredients

a bunch of kale, washed and stems removed

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

sea salt, to taste

Directions

Preheat oven to 275 degrees F.

1. After you have washed and dried the kale leaves, remove the thick rib from the middle of the leaf. Tear the leafy parts into bite-sized pieces. These will retain most of their size after baking. Toss in a large bowl with olive oil.

2. Arrange leaves in a single layer on a baking sheet and lightly sprinkle with salt.

3. Bake for 20 minutes. You could rotate the leaves after 10 minutes of baking, but that depends on how much residual oil is on the leaves. I did not flip the leaves on two of the three batches and they came out okay.

4. Serve immediately.