Incorporate kale into your diet with these four recipes

By Tommy Osborne, February 14 2017 —

Kale is an incredibly healthy food. It’s full of powerful antioxidants, essential vitamins and minerals, fibre and — best of all — no fat. But for many, the unappetizing taste of kale isn’t worth all the health benefits.

But this doesn’t mean you can’t find ways to incorporate kale into your diet. Here are five tasty ways to include kale into your meals:

Kale miso soup:

For fans of Japanese food, adding kale to your miso soup is a great way to incorporate kale into your diet. To make miso soup, you need:

500 ml of water
one teaspoon of dashi
two tablespoons of miso
a leaf of kale
tofu (optional)
green onion (optional)

Start by boiling 500 ml of water. Once the water has heated up, add a teaspoon of dashi and two tablespoons of the miso. Stir until all the miso has dissolved. Then add a leaf of chopped kale. If you want to add more to the miso soup, tofu and green onion slices can can help bring out the notes of dashi.

Kale wraps:

I usually make a chicken parmesan wrap using a combination of recipes from budgetbytes.com and
dempsters.ca. Keep in mind this recipe is for only one wrap, so if you want to make more than one be sure to adjust accordingly. To make this, you will need:

1/2 cup of cooked, shredded chicken
1/2 cup of chopped kale
1/2 a carrot
one tablespoon of bacon bits
one tablespoon of Parmesan cheese
one tortilla, preferably large

You can either buy a pre-shredded pack of chicken or you can make it at home on your own. To make your own, put an uncooked chicken breast in a pan and cover it with water. Cover the pan with a lid and bring the water to a boil. Let it boil for around seven to 12 minutes until the chicken isn’t pink anymore. Take the chicken out and pull it apart with two forks.

Thinly slice carrots and kale, and then add your chicken, carrots and kale to the wrap. After, put the bacon bits and parmesan cheese in your wrap. If you want to add more flavour, caesar dressing or mayonnaise works well.

Keep in mind that raw kale is a goitrogen, meaning that eating it in excess can cause a goitre in your thyroid. While one wrap certainly won’t hurt, you could boil the kale for around seven minutes and then squeeze the water out. This makes the kale completely safe to eat and it will also taste a little better.

Kale smoothies:

There are many different ways to put kale in a smoothie, ranging from green smoothies to fruit smoothies with kale in them. One of my favorites is the chocolate kale protein smoothie from yummyhealthyeasy.com. This one is actually pretty simple to make. All you need is:

3/4 cup of milk (almond or skim)
two cups of kale. If the amount of kale seems daunting you can always lower it a bit
one scoop of chocolate protein powder
one tablespoon of peanut butter
half a banana
a handful of ice

To make this smoothie, start by blending the kale and milk together. After that, simply throw in the rest of the ingredients and blend them all together.

Chocolate chip kale cookies:

While the concept of adding kale to cookies might sound awful, but the kale isn’t really noticeable. To make these cookies, you’ll need:

one and 1/4 cups of flour
two teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 cup of oats
1/2 cup of kale
3/4 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup of unsalted butter
one tablespoon of molasses
two eggs
one cup of chocolate chips.

Start by chopping your kale into tiny pieces. Make sure that they are chopped really small. If they’re too big they’ll be noticeable. Next, sift your flour and baking powder together. After that, beat the butter in a separate bowl until it is soft and smooth. Once the butter is soft, add the brown sugar and mix until there aren’t any noticeable chunks of sugar. Follow that up by beating the eggs and mixing them in with the rest of the batter. Once everything is mixed together well, add your molasses, oats, chocolate chips, flour and kale. Mix them all into your batter, and then bake the cookies in the oven at 350 F for 12 minutes. You’ll notice that when you eat these cookies they taste just like regular cookies — with just a little bit of green.