The Best Kale Salad Ever

Good day, friends! Today I’m sharing a super duper easy-peasy kale salad recipe that packs a ton of flavor and nutrition. I daresay this might be, in my opinion, the best kale salad ever! This can serve as a side dish to a larger meal or as your main dish if you make it large enough and jazz up the toppings.

Remember when kale was just a garnish on your dinner platter or weirdly placed as the base of the salad bar at Pizza Hut?

When we were visiting my mom last month I was looking through a cookbook from the late 1940s and had a good laugh at the dishes in there. I mean, obviously today we are so lucky to have fully stocked grocery stores and an abundance of ingredients that my grandma wouldn’t have had the chance to purchase. But a gelatinous meat bundt thing? Peanut butter and onion sandwiches? Yeesh. One thing I noticed in the few photos found in the book was that kale had a special place as a garnish next to almost anything. Why? Just to give the otherwise beigy meal some much-needed color?

Thankfully the leafy green vegetable saw a huge comeback in the early 10s and is still as popular as ever. I always feel so good after downing one of these salads and it really keeps me going through the afternoon. Even my kids enjoy it!

Massaging Kale?

BUT! You have to massage it a bit. The reason for this is to break it down a bit and make it less tough. But you can also massage it too much! Bon Appetit explains it well:

The trick here is not to over-massage. You know what’s worse than tough kale? Mushy kale. Over-massaged kale loses that texture we love so much. Rub the kale leaves together between your fingers, until they just start to wilt. The way to tell if you’ve hit the right point, as it is with most things, is to taste. You want to massage the leaves to the point where it you can feel a crisp and resistance in the bite, but aren’t struggling to tear away or chew. It should feel more crispy than rubbery.

You can totally prep this ahead of time by putting it in Tupperware and throwing it into the fridge without the dressing, then when you leave for work or school you can toss in the dressing and let it be massaged on its own. The dressing will break down the fibrous kale leaves.

Feel free to modify or add more veggies to this salad, too. Chopped red cabbage, radishes, and even apples would go great with this too. I’ve added some options for the ingredients, as I know not everyone has a hoarder stash of Bragg’s Liquid Aminos like I do. Oh! And if you’re wondering what the heck those brown crispy things are next to the salad in the photos, those are some raw corn tortilla chips that Scott made! We will share the recipe for those soon!