Seattle Kitchen tips for making Kale tasty

Kale can provide 180 percent of your daily recommended Vitamin A, and about half the Vitamin C you need. (AP)

Sometimes healthy dishes can be a little hard to stomach, but the Seattle Kitchen team has some tips to get even veggie haters to indulge in one of the greenest foods around: Kale.

A half cup serving of Kale can provide 180 percent of your daily recommended value of Vitamin A, and about half your daily recommended intake of Vitamin C. But the dark leafy greens can be a turnoff for some.

The Seattle Kitchen staff acknowledges it’s a bit of a balancing act, as some of the measures they recommend (adding butter, oil etc) aren’t necessarily things touted for health benefits, but Seattle Kitchen host Tom Douglas said it’s a way to get veggie haters in the door.

“I’ve actually turned friends onto vegetables by serving them with browned butter,” said Douglas.

For the Kale and browned butter dish, Douglas steams the Kale first, then once the Kale is lightly steamed, drops it in the browned butter.

“The butter is just going to crispen the edge. It’s hot. It’s going to sizzle, and you just serve it right there with a squeeze of lemon.”

Kale salads have also become a very popular item at many Seattle eateries. Douglas’ restaurant Serious Pie just added one to the menu.

“The Kale is not blanched, it’s not anything. It’s just cooked by a wash of lemon juice and olive oil,” said Douglas. “This is full size Kale. It just sits for an hour in lemon juice sauce wash and that acid cooks it, just like ceviche. Then it’s tossed with grated parmesan, olive oil, pine nuts, a little garlic.”

Seattle Kitchen’s Katie O said eating a Kale salad just feels healthy.

“It really tastes verdant and green.”

But co-host Thierry Rautureau points out a lot of these salads are also playing the same health-taste balancing act.

“When you put raw greens, whether it’s lettuce, whether it’s Kale, whether it’s fennel in a salad, right away people go, ‘It’s crunchy. It’s fresh. I feel so good.’ You go, ‘Yeah I put three tablespoon of olive oil on there.'”

“I think that it’s a good price to pay for someone who says, ‘I don’t like vegetables,'” said Douglas of their tools to make greens tastier.

The Seattle Kitchen Show can be heard on the new 97.3 KIRO FM weekend at 8 a.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. on Sunday. Available anytime ON DEMAND at MyNorthwest.com

By JAMIE GRISWOLD, MyNorthwest.com Editor