The Best Kale Salad You've Ever Had
It seems like you can’t go anywhere these days without seeing kale on the menu, and with good reason. Kale is one of the healthiest ingredients around. It’s high in vitamins A, C and K, is full of axioxidants that help fight inflamation, and can even act as a natural detoxifier for your body.
The only problem? If it’s not prepared correctly, raw kale tastes bitter and has a fibrous texture that can be off-putting to even the most diehard health nut. If you’ve been struggling to eat kale straight out of a bag hoping to be healthy, I’m here to save your salads!
Thankfully, preparing kale correctly takes only a few seconds. Once you learn to do it right, there’s no going back.
And what makes this both the best kale salad you’ve ever had and one that you’ll add to your regular meal rotation?
Two things:
It’s made with Your Favorite Ingredients™
You always have those ingredients ready-to-go
Before we jump into the recipe, it’s helpful to understand the basics of what makes a good salad, so that you can be sure you’ve got the right ingredients ready.
The Basics of a Good Salad
A good salad combines multiple ingredients from each of the following categories:
Textures
Flavors (sweet, salty, umami and, potentially spicy and/or bitter)
Healthy food groups (proteins, vegetables, grains, healthy oils, beans and/or fruits)
Colors (because you eat with your eyes!)
Making sure that your salad has at least three different items from each category will give you a delicious, complex and incredibly healthy meal every single time.
It’s worth noting that how a particular ingredient fits in will often depend on how you prepare it. For example, a protein like chicken can be neutral in flavor (plain grilled chicken), sweet (e.g. teriyaki chicken) or spicy (e.g. cajun chicken). Similarly, garbanzo beans / chickpeas can provide a soft texture if they’re boiled or a crunchy texture if they’re fried.
Here are some of my favorite ingredients to use, by category:
Textures
Soft: avocado, cherry tomatoes, goat cheese, queso fresco, fish, boiled eggs
Hard: strawberries, red pepper, prawns
Crunchy: croutons, sunflower seeds, fried chickpeas, green beans, snap peas
Flavors
Sweet: berries, tomatoes, avocado, bourbon braised smoked tofu, dried cranberries
Salty: seasoned croutons, parmesan cheese, anchovies, caesar salad dressing
Umami: steak, salmon, sesame oil, teriyaki / soy sauce
Spicy: blackened / cajun chicken, jerk chicken
Bitter: Coffee-crusted steak, broccoli, asparagus
Food Categories
Proteins: chicken, salmon, steak, prawns, tofu, boiled eggs
Vegetables: snap peas, asparagus, red pepper
Fruits: cherry tomatoes, avocado, blueberries, strawberries
Beans: edamame beans, black beans, green beans
Grains: croutons, sunflower seeds, corn, puffed quinoa
At the bottom of this page, I’ve included a selection of my favorite salads. So let’s get into it:
Kale Salad
Serves: 2 as a main / 4 as a side
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Ingredients
1 bunch of curly kale
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
Your Favorite Ingredients™ (see below for suggested recipes)
Preparation
Remove the kale leaves from their stems and tear into bite-sized pieces. Place the kale leaves into a large bowl and discard the stems.
The key to a good kale salad is to massage the kale with extra-virgin olive oil, which breaks down the fibrous leaves, thus softening their texture, while removing the natural bitterness of the kale.
To do this, pour the olive oil over the bowl of leaves and then use your hands to gently massage the kale. As the olive oil coats the kale leaves and you massage them, you will noticeably feel the texture change after 1-2 minutes. There should be just enough olive oil and the leaves get coated (and your hands feel oily!) but not so much that it pools at the bottom of the bowl.
Let the kale sit for 5-10 minutes after massaging — this is when you slice, dice and prepare the rest of Your Favorite Ingredients™.
Once you’ve got everything ready, assemble your salad as follows:
1. Take ⅓ of each of Your Favorite Ingredients™ and add them to the bowl with the massaged kale leaves.
2. Drizzle your salad dressing of choice overtop of the bowl. Note: if you are making your own oil-based dressing, remove 1 tbsp of extra-virgin olive oil to account for the extra oil already in the salad.
3. Mix the ingredients together and divide into serving bowls.
At this point, your salad dressing should be nicely mixed in with the kale leaves and a portion of Your Favorite Ingredients™. You’re probably wondering, “Why did we only add ⅓ of Your Favorite Ingredients™?”
When you add all of the ingredients to a salad before mixing, they fall down to the bottom of the bowl (you know what I’m talking about 😉). As a result, you end up with a salad that doesn’t deliver balanced, multi-textured bites. By mixing ⅓ of each of Your Favorite Ingredients™ into the salad and plating the rest on top, you end up with a salad that looks and eats like it should.
Which leads to the final step:
4. Evenly distribute the remaining ⅔ of Your Favorite Ingredients™ on top of the salads, in the following order:
Soft and hard ingredients first (vegetables, fruits, etc.)
Crunchy ingredients next (croutons, seeds, etc.)
Protein third
Herbs or garnishes last
Doing this takes only a minute or two, but it ensures that each and every salad you make is truly the best kale salad you’ve ever had.
(And yes, I do this every time I make a salad — just ask my coworkers.)
Suggested Recipes
Here are examples of kale salads with my Favorite Ingredients™ (each recipe serves 2 mains, as above):
Kale Caesar Salad with Blackened Chicken
1 bunch massaged curly kale (as above)
1 blackened or cajun-spiced grilled chicken breast, sliced
½ avocado, cubed
12 cherry tomatoes, halved
½ cup garlic croutons
⅓ cup caesar salad dressing (if making from scratch, I love this recipe)
¼ cup shredded Parmesan cheese
6 anchovy fillets (optional)
Kale Salad with Bourbon Braised Smoked Tofu
1 bunch massaged curly kale (as above)
2 cups Bourbon Braised Smoked Tofu
½ avocado, cubed
12 cherry tomatoes, halved
½ cup garlic croutons
½ cup boiled or grilled corn, removed from cob
½ cup boiled edamame beans, removed from shell
Combine 2 tbsp of the BBQ sauce from the tofu with 1 tbsp of extra-virgin olive oil and squeeze of lime juice for the dressing
Kale Salad with Coffee-Rubbed Steak
1 bunch massaged curly kale (as above)
1 NY striploin, crusted in bourbon smoked chili & coffee rub and grilled medium-rare, sliced
½ avocado, cubed
12 cherry tomatoes, halved
½ cup blueberries
½ cup red pepper, diced
½ cup garlic croutons
Balsamic vinaigrette (1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil + 2 tbsp aged balsamic vinegar + salt & pepper, to taste)
Kale Salad with Pan-Seared Duck Breast
1 bunch massaged curly kale (as above)
1 pan-seared duck breast, sliced
12 cherry tomatoes, halved
½ cup blueberries
½ cup red pepper, diced
¼ cup dried cranberries
½ cup garlic croutons
Orange-balsamic vinaigrette (1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil + 2 tbsp aged balsamic vinegar + orange zest + salt & pepper, to taste)
Kale Salad with Bourbon Braised Smoked Tofu