This is John Kohler with GrowingYourGreens.com, today we’re in the local Whole Foods, and
when you think of snack foods, do you think of some kind of chips that you could have
a nice crunch on?
And if you’re growing a garden, what is in your garden that’s crunchy?
There’s not many things.
Instead of chips, which may be not so healthy and have been fried, I’m going to show you
an alternative today here at Whole Foods, and then we’re going to show you how to
make it fresh from the garden.
So now we’re in another aisle of Whole Foods, and in this aisle they have kale chips.
They have a lot of different brands of kale chips.
These guys, the problem with these, is they’re much healthier than corn chips or potato chips
or any other kind of chip, but the problem is they’re $6.49, and that’s for three
ounces.
So that’s $2.16 per ounce, that’s absolutely insane.
So what we’re going to do is I’m going to show you how to make kale chips out of
the kale or other leafy greens that you’re growing in your garden.
So let’s come back to my house and I’ll show you how to make some kale chips.
As you just saw in the clip, kale chips can get very expensive, and the other thing that
you may not notice is that they’re all made out of kale!
But you can make kale chips or vegetable chips out of most anything you’re growing in your
garden.
I’m going to show you how to do that today.
I’m standing here next to my giant tree collard tree, some of my tree collards are
literally 15 feet tall, and these are a special variety of collards that grows 365 days a
year here in California because you just pick off the leaves as they grow.
So they’re absolutely amazing.
And the special thing to know is that in any recipe that you’re making, you always want
to use the highest quality ingredients.
So what that means to me is growing it yourself, because when you grow yourself, you’re going
to hopefully have the highest quality because you control the growing procedures, how it’s
grown, and even when it’s picked, and when it’s used after it’s picked.
The other thing when you do grow your own food is you can choose when to harvest the
leaves.
So for example, we can harvest the big leaves up over here, or you know, that most people
have to de-stem when they make kale chips.
Or we could choose to pick these much smaller baby leaves, and these much smaller baby leaves
don’t quite have as hard of a stem.
They’re a lot more tender and actually then you don’t need to de-stem them, so that’s
going to save some time in the long run.
Plus the smaller leaves in most cases are much sweeter than the larger leaves.
So I’m going to pick some of these tree collards.
So I encourage you to use a variety of different leafy greens when making your leafy green
chips.
So here’s just yet another one.
This one is actually called flowering kale or ornamental kale, and check out this deep
rich purple color on it.
We’re just going to harvest a couple of these leaves in here, and this is amazing.
This is just like a dark rich purple.
And you want to remember, we want to eat the rainbow.
So growing different foods allows you to grow different colors and eat them to get all the
nutrition from the different colored foods.
So now I’m sitting behind my red variegated sorrel plants, and these plants are simply
amazing.
Take a look at these leaves, it looks like something that would be poisonous, but this
is a variety of sorrel, has a nice sorrely flavor, and I found these are best eating
when these are actually baby leaves and small.
When they get larger, they’re not necessarily that good for salads.
They can get a little bit better, it’s that sorrel coming out.
But they make amazing kale chips or tree collard chips or red variegated sorrel chips, so we’re
going to harvest some of these also and make some red variegated sorrel chips too, so when
you grow your own food, you get to experiment with all the different things you grow to
find interesting and unique uses for them!
So I never knew you could make red variegated sorrel chips and they’re actually my favorite
because the sorrel flavor ends up turning into like a salty kind of flavor once they’re
dehydrated.
So before I go inside I saw these growing and I just have to harvest some and make these
into some vegetable chips too.
This is actually arugula.
Arugula has a nice spicy flavor and these also make excellent vegetable chips.
So remember, you can make more than just kale to make more than just kale to make your kale
chips or leaf vegetable chips.
We’re going to use some arugula, it has a nice spicy flavor.
So now we’re inside, I’m going to share with you the different ingredients that I’m
going to use to make the collard chips.
There’s basically just six ingredients, so I always encourage people to make recipes
that have as few ingredients as possible, because they’re going to digest well.
And if you use high quality ingredients, you can get away with using less ingredients,
because it’s going to have that rich full flavor.
And we’re going to talk about the quality of some the ingredients that I’m using in
just a moment, but first let’s introduce all the different ingredients.
So firs tu saw me pick all the leafy greens form the tree collards to the red variegated
sorrel and the arugula.
Also we have four Roma tomatoes here, and it is the off season right now.
Tomatoes in the off season, in the winter time, usually don’t taste too good, so what
I’ going to do to kick that flavor up a little bit, I’m going to add a half cup
of sun dried cherry tomatoes.
Now these cherry tomatoes I grew myself and dehydrated at low temperature so I can be
assured that they are.
Plus, cherry tomatoes when they’re dry taste incredible.
They just bring out that sweetness.
The next thing we’re going to use is a half cup of sauerkraut.
This is fresh fermented sauerkraut, absolutely delicious.
That’ll add basically this flavor intensity and this unique flavor to the chips, make
them taste really good.
Of course, next, can’t forget the one cup of dried macadamia nuts.
They’re my favorite nut, nice fatty flavor, cream up really nice.
Followed by on bell pepper, and this is an orange bell pepper that I grew myself and
even harvested now in winter time.
And behind the regular sweet bell pepper, we got some dried peppers.
So this is about a half cup of dried peppers and there’s—I grew 20 different varieties
of peppers, so these are mixed, dried, hot, and sweet peppers.
And this also adds a flavor uniqueness to the whole recipe.
Once again, it’s coming down to the quality of the ingredients.
Using good quality ingredients and you’re going to get a better result in the end.
The last ingredient that we’re going to use is basically one lemon, and that was grown
by a neighbor.
So now let me show you how easy this recipe is to do.
Basically you’re putting the ingredients in the blender, blending it up, and then you’re
going to spread the ingredients onto the kale chip, and then put it in the dehydrator.
So first step we’re basically going to take the blender lid off and we’re using the
large, wild side blender craft, has a four inch wide blade, so it basically puts pre-chopping
anything you’re putting in the blender not required.
So we could actually just take a whole tomato and drop them in there and they’re still
going to blend up, and you want do that with any blender.
The next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to take my bell pepper and we’re basically
going to de-seed it.
And while I’m de-seeding it, let’s go ahead and talk about the quality of the ingredient
that you’re using.
The quality of the ingredient that you’re using will basically make up the recipe.
So if you’re using ingredient that aren’t so good, don’t taste so good, don’t have
a lot flavor, then you are recipe is not going to taste good.
When you’re using high quality ingredients that were fresh picked such as the leafy greens
and such as the pepper here, and the lemon, the flavors are going to come at you and hit
you in the face, literally!
And the other thing is my growing practices.
The growing practices that are used to grow all my food include using a lot of rock dust
minerals, which basically adds minerals or 92 plus minerals back into the soil, plus
organic compost.
So by adding the minerals and the compost, I’m growing really high quality food.
So when you add the minerals back into the soil, it makes the plants more disease resistant.
The plants grow larger, they yield more.
But more importantly, especially for people that are into making and preparing high quality
food, it makes the food taste better, because we have mineral receptors on our tongue that
are not just looking for that salty flavor.
It’s looking for any kind of mineral because we need minerals to survive and most chefs
add that salt component to try to like turn on those mineral receptors, when it does,
but it’s a fake sense, because it’s not providing our body with all 90 plus minerals
and trace minerals that we need.
So growing your own food, if you want to have the highest quality food in my opinion, very
super important.
Let’s go ahead and add the rest of the bell pepper in there.
So what we’re doing now is we’re adding all the liquid ingredient and we’re basically
going to blend up the liquids.
Now we’re going to cut up the lemon and add the lemon juice to the blender, really
simple and really easy.
Use of one lemon.
And what we’re doing first is we’re basically add all the liquid ingredient to the blender
and we’re going to add the dried ingredient later.
Why we do this is because we have a blend tech blender here, but if you didn’t have
a blend tech blender, if you had a regular standard household blender, you’d need to
blend all the liquid items first before the dried items, otherwise you won’t get a really
good complete blend.
So I like to usually do the water rich items first.
So there you go.
That’s all the lemon.
So we just added all the liquid items.
Next, we’re going to add the dried peppers and we’re going to make sure all those peppers
get ground up really fine so the flavors combine.
Next we’re going to turn the blender around high.
All right, so our blender has blended up all the liquid ingredients and as you can see
here, we have a nice pretty color, and I really like to make things that have nice pretty
colors.
Check it out, nice, rich, orange color.
So the next step is we’re going to add our dry ingredient.
So simply add the one cup of macadamia nuts, half cup of sauerkraut and the half cup of
cherry tomatoes that are dried by me.
Then we’re just going to ahead and re-blend this mixture, really simple and really easy.
All right, so the blender is done blending, and you could check it out.
We have a nice creamy consistency in there, and this can be used as like a salad dressing
or even just use it to dip the collards into and then just eat them fresh instead of dehydrating,
because I like to say freshest is always bestest, but of course you’re not going to get that
crunchy flavor that everybody’s looking for.
So now we’re going to just simply take a pastry brush and brush on the mixture onto
the collard leaves.
And many people that make kale chips might cut up your collards, de-stem your collards,
put them in a bowl and then like dump the whole mixture in, and then mix them all up.
And that will cope the mixture on both sides, but then you have to use things like a tech
fleck sheet or a non stick sheet in the dehydrator, which will increase your drying time.
So I simply just like to take the pastry brush, get them brushed, and then just like literally
brush this on the collard ship, so basically we’re just brushing it on really simple,
really easy with the pastry brush.
Then we’re going to go ahead and put it in the dehydrator, and once again, no non
stick sheet or no tech fleck sheet is necessary.
And it’s always better to dehydrate with the regular mesh sheets because the mesh sheets
have the holes, the air flow can actually get underneath and dry whatever you’re dehydrating
faster.
So when you are using a tech fleck sheet, air can’t circulate to the bottom of whatever
you’re dehydrating, so in that case you’ll have to actually flip whatever you’re dehydrating
and dehydration will take longer.
So by coating the collard chip only on one side, then we don’t have to get the mesh
sheet dirty.
It’s going to save cleaning time, plus it’s going to dehydrate faster, so it’s going
to be ready quicker and it’s going to save you money and you’re not going to have to
run your dehydrator as long.
So let’s go ahead and batter up one of these.
Red variegated sorrels, definitely pretty.
And these are actually going to come out with a nice salty flavor.
And once again, these are grown in rock dust minerals, and if you do garden, I would encourage
you to use the rock dust minerals in your growing beds.
If you Don’t garden, definitely request and ask your farmers that grow your food to
use the rock dust.
It makes everything taste better.
So then we’re going to go ahead and put that on.
Next we’re going to that oh so cute flowering kale, which is the purple flowering kale.
And isn’t that a sight?
I mean the purple kale and then we got the nice orange sauce on it.
Really simple, really easy.
next we’re going to go ahead and batter up an arugula leaf.
Arugula has a nice peppery flavor.
And one of the funnest things to do is to eat arugula flowers.
If you have never eaten the arugula flowers, they’re absolutely amazing.
So we’re just going to go ahead and batter this up too and put it in the dehydrator.
So I like to just pack my dehydrator full of all the leaves.
Ill actually come in here and I’ll arrange them so I can be the most space efficient
and get the most leaves on my dehydrator at one time.
So I always encourage people to purchase the largest dehydrator that they can, because
you could always run the dehydrator half full, but if you have extra left over batter and
extra kale chips or collard chips to put in, you’re going to run out of space on a smaller
dehydrator.
So that being said, this will make an excellent salad dressing, if you do run out of space
and Don’t have anything else to do with your batter mixture.
Next I’m just going to go ahead and load up the rest of the tray with some chips, and
then we’re going to turn on the dehydrator and get it dehydrated.
All right, so I’m just putting the final touches of batter on the chips.
All done.
Now here are all the collard leaves, red variegated sorrel, we’re going to put that in the dehydrator.
And put the door on.
And now all we’re going to simply do is turn the dehydrator on to about 115, is where
I like to set it at.
So you could dehydrate it as quickly as possible, save energy.
And now we’re just going to come aback.
Basically over night is how long this usually takes to dehydrate.
That may vary, depending if you live in a more humid or non humid environment, so I’ll
show you the results tomorrow.
So we’re back!
It’s the next day, and these collard chips are finished.
And let’s go ahead and turn the dehydrator off, and take them out of the dehydrator,
and show you what we got.
So we’re going to go ahead and turn this dehydrator off.
We’re going to take off the door of the nine tray dehydrator.
And now we’re going to pull out the collard chips.
Now these collard chips are basically dehydrated.
So the dehydrator works by basically only evaporating off the water, so the reason why
this is so important is because when you just take out the water at a low temperature, it
leaves all the enzymes and a lot more of the nutrition intact in the food.
So when we eat the food, basically we’re getting all the nutrients that nature intended,
except for the water, if you do it at a low temperature.
So that’s why I had the dehydrator at 115 degrees.
It’s also very important.
Some people may use the non stick sheets.
Once again, I recommend not to use the non stick sheets, it’s only going to increase
your dehydration time, and you’re going to have to flip them, and you’re going to
have to actually clean the sheets off, because they get all kind of… you know, sticky after
dehydrating kale that’s been coated on both sides.
And I encourage you to use all your leafy greens that you’re growing in your garden.
I know you’re going to have an overabundance when you get so excited and start growing
all these leaves.
And you’re not going to know what to do with them, because most people maybe steam
or cook up their kale, but I want to tell you that kale can be delicious whether they’re
dehydrated, blended up in like a green smoothie, or even juiced, or even actually just cut
up and eaten as a salad, especially when there’s the baby and the smaller leavers.
The larger leaves actually make really good kale chips.
so let’s take a look at these kale chips.
here we have the red variegated sorrel chip.
And looks really cool on the backside.
There’s one… here’s another one, you can just kinda see and that’s just like
almost artistic, how it looks, red variegated sorrel, and these ones actually taste delicious,
because they have that salty flavor from the sorrel leaf flavor.
Let’s see, here’s one that really cool.
This is the flowering kale, that’s the purple flowering kale.
Dehydrated to a nice purple color, really cool.
And here’s the arugula and arugula, once again, grows like a weed.
You can throw the seeds out, and before you know it, you’re going to have lots of arugula,
and more than you know what to do with.
Oh, and here’s one even in the shape of a heart!
I didn’t know collard leaves came in the heart.
Well you know, I have a special variety that grows leaves in shapes of hearts.
Just kidding!
So the reason for this video is this is actually the valentine Hot Raw Chef contest, and you
know, I need your guys help to win.
This is basically based on a popular vote, on one part of the contest, so if all my viewers
could come help me out and go to HotRawChef.com, and basically just vote for my video, my kale
chip video.
You got to see the extended version here on my YouTube channel, but they’ve got a clipped
down version because I could only show five minutes worth.
Go to HotRawChef.com, vote for me.
Once again, John Kohler.
And hope you’ve learned more about how to use your collard, kale, and other leafy greens
in interesting ways here in this episode to make some delicious chips.
So once again, this is John Kohler with GrowingYourGreens.com.
Keep growing your kale and other leafy greens.
And you know what, make some kale or collard chips out of them!
They’re so delicious.