We are big fans of a raw food restaurant in Encinitas, CA called “Peace Pies” – everything we’ve tried on the menu is good, but their kale chips are AMAZING.

They’re so good they inspired us to purchase a dehydrator so we could make them at home.  The below recipe is my version of their chips. NOTE: This recipe calls for a dehydrator, we bought ours for $30.00 at Costco – it’s nothing fancy, but it does the job (brand = Waring).  I’ve never been able to master kale chips in the oven, but they would probably taste just as good dehydrated on a low heat on cookie sheets.

Ingredients:

• Kale (cleaned and de-stemmed) about 3-4 bushels from the grocery store – Variety doesn’t matter.
• Cashews (~2 cups) soaked in water for 2+ hours
• Red Salsa of your choice
• Nutritional Yeast (3 Tablespoons)
• Yellow Onion (1/2 of one large)
• 2 Garlic Cloves
• Turmeric (2 Tablespoons)
• Salt & Pepper

Instructions:

• Clean and de-stem kale.  The chips REALLY cook down in size, leave them larger than you would for a typical chip.  This can be the time consuming step as we use kale from our garden and some of my plants tend to get aphids (small bugs).  What I’ve found works best to remove them is REALLY hot water, rinsing each piece individually.
• In a food processor, combine onion, garlic cloves, soaked (and drained) cashews, nutritional yeast & Turmeric.  Add Salsa and warm water as needed to get a thick “nacho cheese” consistency.  Add salt & pepper to your taste.  This will probably make more cheese than you need, but I always like to have some extra left over for tacos/burritos/etc.
• In a large bowl massage the cleaned kale with the cheese mixture until all kale is completely coated.
• Place Kale on dehydrator sheets – spread out pieces as much as possible without layering on each other.
• Dehydrate on HIGH for 3-6 hours – checking on the chips every hour or so.  As they begin to dehydrate they really stick to the dehydrator sheets – I gently pull them away from the sheet a couple times during the dehydrating process so that they don’t crumble when I am finally ready to remove them.
• Once the chips are “crunchy” they’re ready to eat!  ENJOY.

KALE: We’re growing a few varieties – they all work great as chips.

The kids LOVE Kale… it’s actually a bit strange how much they like it.

Removing the stems is important because they don’t dry out as quickly as the leaves.

“Nacho Cheese” Consistency – this is a 5 cup food processor.

The Dehydrator.  We actually used two of them this time as my mom also has one and we were making them as an Easter Appetizer at her house.

Consistency pre-dehydration.

Belly Shot.  Hard to believe we only have a month left until this baby girl rocks our world!