Kai and The Kitchen

Recipes and Musings of Food and Life

126 Clean Eats

Kale Me Maybe {Chopped Kale Salad with Bacon and White Beans}

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I remember the first time I bought kale. It was around the time a few years ago that kale became the world’s trendiest green. It was everywhere. Hidden in smoothies. Made into chips. People were wearing shirts with catchy kale sayings to the gym. Every restaurant had added kale salads to their menus.

I took it home from the store excitedly, cut it up and threw it in a salad. YUCK. WHAT was all the fuss about!?! And what was I doing wrong?! I felt like a dinosaur chomping on the rough raw foliage. “I’m literally eating raw branches,” I remember thinking. It was then that I googled “HOW TO MAKE A SALAD WITH KALE” and learned that I was supposed to massage the kale prior to adding it to a salad. I tried again using the massaging method and swapped out the normal kale for Tuscan Kale, a variety that I’ve learned I like much better.

This act of massaging the kale has never been something I’m particularly fond of. In fact, it’s one of three kitchen tasks that I’ll call Kevin in to the kitchen to do. He’s my designated kale massager. And that has been working for us for quite a while until I realized that I could make both of our lives a lot easier by just using my food processor on the kale. This method allows me to give the kale the chopped salad texture that I prefer in almost every salad. This allows you to get more goodness in every bite and also makes every bite more manageable.

In creating this salad I knew I wanted to use the kale with some type of warm white bean mixture. White beans are delicious with crispy bacon and I knew that would help to add some fat and flavor to the salad. I added the toasted pine nuts and shaved parmesan because I love how they help to accentuate the nutty flavor of the kale. When I tried this salad with no dressing, I actually didn’t think it needed much else. I threw a simple lemony vinaigrette over the salad just to give it an even coating and add a litter more moister to the leaves.

If you’re someone who is on the fence about kale or if you simply dread the act of massaging it every time you work with it, give this preparation method a try! You’ll never look back.

Let’s get started. 

Step 1: Pulse it. Throw your kale in the food processor and pulse it 8-10 times. Check the consistency of the kale. I like mine with a pretty thorough chopping, but if you’re looking for larger leaves stop now. If not, keep going until it has the texture you are looking for.

Step 2: Smell the bacon. Throw your bacon ends into a sauté pan and cook until crispy. Remove from the pan. Reserve about 1 tablespoon of bacon fat in the pan.

Step 3: Beans. Add your beans to the bacon with your leftover bacon drippings. Add oregano, salt, and pepper. Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes.

Step 4: Dress up. Let’s make that simple dressing.  Combine grated lemon zest, lemon juice, dijon, salt, pepper, and olive oil in your food processor (don’t bother to clean it after the kale pulsing 🙂

Step 5: Toss it. Toss all your ingredients together. Dress the salad according to your taste. It doesn’t need much. Reserve your leftover dressing (if there is any) for leftover salad.

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