Kale Recipe: How to Prepare a Five-Minute Kale Side Dish

The Ultimate Vegetable

Kale is one of the healthiest vegetables on the planet. This underrated leafy vegetable is packed full of cancer and heart-disease-fighting vitamins and minerals, 200% of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin C, and more than 1,000% of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin K and 5 grams of fiber per cup. You simply can not go wrong with this leafy green giant.

KAle used to intimidate me. I'd stare at it out of the corner of my eye with curiosity at the grocery store but never went any further than that because I just didn't know how to cook it or what to do with it. How times have changed! I had always heard that kale is bitter when eaten raw. When I was in high school, kale is what the restaurant I worked in used to decorate their salad bar and no one ever ate it. To me, it was just a pretty salad bar decoration.

I've always been told that kale is bitter when eaten raw. When I was in high school, kale is what the restaurant I worked in used to decorate their salad bar and no one ever ate it. To me, it was just a pretty salad bar decoration.

This dish is excellent as I have it posted it here but there are other things that I have added to this over the years. Toasted pine nuts are an excellent addition along with mixing in a bit of garlic or other herbs from the garden. If it is a vegetable and shows up in your cold salad, you probably couldn't go wrong with adding it to this. The only thing that I can think of off of the top of my head that you wouldn't want to add in would be cucumbers. For some reason, warm cucumber just doesn't sound right.

This recipe changed my mind quickly. I got tired of being a coward when it came to kale and bought some after contemplating how to cook it. So here is the five-minute kale side dish that literally changed my mind and outlook on kale. It's not just a decoration for salad bars anymore.

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Cook Time

Ingredients

• 2 cups raw kale
• 1 carrot, I used an orange carrot but you can also use other colors
• 2 green onions
• 1 teaspoon olive oil, really just enough to coat the pan

A Note on Adding Other Vegetables to the Dish

One thing that is important to remember is the order that the vegetables are added to the dish. Vegetables like carrots, parsnips, leeks, kohlrabi, and other vegetables that are harder will need to be added to the pan first because they will benefit from being in there the longest.

Wait until toward the end to add spinach, onions, capers, garlic, and other vegetables that will become soggy or overcook easily. By doing it this way, you will have a crisp side dish that can make the taste buds so happy that they just might do a little dance.

How to Make a Kale Side Dish

1. Cut all of your vegetables up into bite-size pieces. I used kale, carrots, and green onion for this dish.
2. Put the olive oil into the pan and turn the heat to medium.
3. Heat the pan until the olive oil is hot.
4. Add your carrots and allow them to cook for a few minutes. You don't want them soft, you want them to still have some crunch to them.
5. Once the carrots have cooked for a couple of minutes, add the kale. Stir it around so the olive oil starts to coat the leaves. If you are using salt and/or pepper, you can do the first seasoning now.
6. The last thing to add is the green onion. Again, you don't want anything mushy, just slightly cooked. At this point your kale will be bright green, the carrots will have extremely vivid color and after the green onion has been in the pan for a while, it will smell delicious.
7. Only allow it to cook for a minute or two and then it is done!

This simple dish uses only three ingredients!

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© 2012 Helena Hasquin