Wash Kale Before Eating

[Baudilio Eliason]

TheBEST method for how to wash and store kale, so that it stays fresh and ready for quick smoothies and salads! Using these easy tips, your kale will stay fresh for over a week, and up to two weeks.

A while back I was doing my weekly grocery shopping on a Saturday morning. I was lucky enough to be shopping with just William that day, and he was helping me to pick out some fresh fruits and vegetables for the week.

This article was co-authored by Ollie George Cigliano. Ollie George Cigliano is a Private Chef, Food Educator, and Owner of Ollie George Cooks, based in Long Beach, California. With over 20 years of experience, she specializes in utilizing fresh, fun ingredients and mixing traditional and innovative cooking techniques. Ollie George holds a BA in Comparative Literature from The University of California, Berkeley, and a Nutrition and Healthy Living Certificate from eCornell University.

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Kale is a healthy leafy green vegetable that can be used in salads and other recipes. If you want to use kale, it's important that you wash it first. To wash kale, you will need to remove the stems and submerge it in water. Then, rinse kale under tap water to remove any lingering dirt and debris. From there, store kale carefully until you need to use it.

The benefits of kale are numerous. First, this nutrient-dense vegetable is very low in calories. Second, kale is a high fiber food that provides a feeling of fullness and helps with digestion by feeding good bacteria in the gut. Finally, kale is chock full of antioxidants that reduce inflammation and help the body to detox more effectively.

If kale soup is your thing, try my superfood Green Chicken Soup, or toss thinly sliced kale into my Chicken Zoodle Soup. And I also have some fantastic low-carb kale chips recipes for you below that my boys love.

I have a bunch of other fabulous kale salad recipes for you including my Raw Kale Shiitake Salad which features wonderful Asian flavors, shown above. Here are some of my other easy kale salad recipes:

I am new to Keto and using Kale.

I think the secret to keeping kale longer in the fridge, is to keep it dry.

Use paper towels or cloth after chopping, before putting it in a bag in the fridge.

Repeat the massaging process and drain it again. Refill the colander for a third time with fresh water. We like using the triple rinse method and drawing from our experience find that this process should eliminate any residual grit.

Using a kitchen towel or reusable paper towels for storage is a bit more environmentally conscious alternative to a layer of paper towels as you can wash and reuse them.

This is an excellent post, Sharon. We use kale in many dishes as well (love salted crispy kale!). Great tips for being environmentally friendly, too. We are the same as you, even recycling the water to give our planters a drink. ? Thanks for the great tips and techniques.

What?! The garbage can? You are crazy. Lol. I actually LOVE kale. It is earthy and just FEELS healthy when you eat it. Or drink it which I mainly do. Try a smoothie Andrea! Add a banana. It is good stuff!!

When washing vegetables that can get muddy (Kale, leeks, etc.) I generally recommend first using tepid to slightly warm water to help soften the mud more easily. Leeks should be split down the middle and then can be fanned under warm water which will help wash the dirt out more readily.

For Kale, if it isn't muddy then you can use cold water and give it a soak and agitate as hobodave indicated below. If they're muddy and dirty, then I'd use slightly warmer water to first clean them and then give them a soak in some cold water to help plump them up and increase their turgor pressure to make them nice and crisp.

Leafy greens like kale should be washed in a sink or tub full of cold water. Submerge the leaves in there and agitate them gently. You do not have to worry about pesticides. Your greater concern should be with removing all the sand and dirt from these leaves. Chewing on a rock, no matter how small is not a pleasant experience for you or your guests.

Kale is a hardy, leafy green that is part of the Brassica family. It has gained popularity because of its nutritional benefits, versatility, and ease of growing. At this point, it is muscle memory for me to pick up a bunch of kale during my weekly grocery store visit. I know that I will use it at some point.

Kale has a slight bitter taste and is often eaten cooked because of its fibrous leaves. However, it makes a great raw salad with the right preparation. It is often used in stews, braises, stir-fries and roasted dishes where you want to add some green because it holds up well during the cooking process. Cooking kale also reduces bitterness.

First off, it is one of the higher risk vegetables for pesticide contamination. According to the Environmental Working Group, kale was the third most at risk fruit or vegetable in terms of pesticide contamination. So, if you purchase non-organic kale, be sure to give it a good wash before eating.

Raw kale is also high in a potentially harmful compound called goitrin, High amounts of goitrin may be harmful to thyroid function and lower iodine levels. However, studies have shown that consuming a moderate amount of raw kale per day is not harmful to thyroid function.

Another colorful kale variety is one that you may also see at your grocery store. I see Redbor kale at my local Whole Foods. It looks very similar to curly kale except the leaves and stems are a mix of deep red, maroon, and purple. It all just looks purple to me. Its flavor is milder than curly kale, but it is great for adding a blast of color to your dishes.

You will most likely have the choice to buy a bunch or a bag of kale. I like using bunches of kale, so I can easily manage stems and leaves. Kale leaves and stems need to be cooked at different lengths. Plus, they can be cooked completely differently.

My local Whole Foods has bunched curly, Lacinato, and Redbor kale varieties. Plus, chopped bagged kale. That is some nice variety right there. In most cases, your local grocery store will at least have curly kale and maybe chopped bagged kale.

Kale is a hardy, cool season green that is harvested in the spring, late summer and into fall. It can tolerate light frosts, so its season even goes into early winter. Typically, September is considered prime time for kale. That is one of the reasons you see it in so many soups and braises.

Place kale seeds directly into soil in early spring, about 1/2 inch deep. After 2 to 3 weeks, you should see some seedlings popping up. Pluck some of the seedlings out of the ground so each plant is 8 to 12 inches apart.

Store kale in a plastic bag or sealed container in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator. It should keep for several days and up to a week. It stores better than more delicate greens like spinach and lettuce.

In most cases, your kale preparation starts with separating the leaves and stems. Strip leaves from kale stems by tightly pinching the stem and running your fingers along it. Or rip each leaf half off the stems.

Generally, a moderate amount of raw kale is safe to eat. But, eating a ton of raw kale day after day may be harmful to thyroid function. This is because raw kale is high in a potentially harmful compound called goitrin.

A few years ago, I took home a cicada that was hiding in a bunch of curly kale from a grocery store in Harlem. This past fall, I found six bugs in a bunch of escarole from the farmers market (some dead, some alive). And over the weekend, I spotted a snail (a live snail!) on a bunch of purple kale at the Park Slope Food Co-Op.

Which is why I was surprised to read an article on Epicurious that made a case for not washing produce. It's a messy, time-consuming hassle, the writer Becky Hughes argued, that creates a barrier to eating vegetables without even eliminating "all of the farm chemicals and the inevitable germs." Her last point? The anecdotal evidence that she's still alive and well to this day.

Hughes did say if there is "visible dirt on a head of lettuce, or grit in a bunch of parsley, [she]'ll (grudgingly) give it a rinse," but I, for one, know I've been fooled by clean-looking leaves one too many times. I will never forget the lentil salad I ruined by neglecting to wash the spinach. The grit crunched between my teeth with every bite.

I don't mean to fearmonger, or to even suggest that this amount of grit and dirt will harm you. I'm merely saying that there's a reason to wash your leafy greens (even if you're going to cook them), and that the few minutes it takes to remove the grime might get you a better taste and texture, too.

People love to hate (and hate to love) kale. Prior to 2012, the notoriously bitter and difficult to chew leafy green was primarily just used to decorate Pizza Hut's salad bar (via NPR). So what changed over the past decade? One major factor is that people began to realize that it is one of the most nutrient-packed vegetables out there. Just 1 cup of kale contains 206% of the recommended dose of vitamin A, 134% of vitamin C, and a whopping 684% of vitamin K. It is also high in antioxidants, calcium, and magnesium. Studies have even shown it to help lower cholesterol. Given the benefits, kale is unsurprisingly dominating the health food market.

Yet, it can still be hard to get past kale's tough texture and taste, making it a vegetable a lot of people claim to not enjoy. However, you do not have to eat kale begrudgingly. If you avoid these mistakes, you get the full satisfaction of a food that has the potential to taste great in addition to being great for you.

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