How To Make Kale Caesar Salad

Kale Caesar Salad is a delicious and nutritious way to incorporate kale into your diet. This rugged plant is easy to grow in most climates and when it grows you have an abundance of it and this is a great way to use some of it.

Kale can be tough and chewy but we’ll show you how trim and work with the kale to make it pleasant to eat. When we put a Caesar dressing on it can be absolutely delicious.

This recipe is naturally gluten free.

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The Ingredients For Kale Caesar Salad

• 1 bunch Kale, stems removed
• 1/2 cup Grated Parmesan
• 1 Tbls Dijon Mustard
• Zest and Juice of 1 Lemon
• 3 Anchovies
• 2 Shakes Worcestershire Sauce
• 1/4 Cup Sesame Oil
• 1/2 Cup Sliced Almonds

Wash and Drain the Kale

We’ll start by washing and draining the kale. We just want to clean it well and then let some of the water dry so the leaves are not too wet.

Cut the Stems Out

When the kale leaves are dry we want to cut the large stems out of them. We lay the leaves flat and cut down both sides of the big stems and remove them.

Roll the Leaves and Cut

We’ll lay several de-stemmed leaves on top of each other and roll them up tightly. Then we’ll make very thin slices perpendicular to the roll to get a fine shred of the kale leaves. This slicing technique is called chiffonade. You’ll find it useful for leafy vegetables as well as herbs. here it helps us get this strips of kale which makes it more tender than large pieces.

Large Salad Bowl

We’ll put all our sliced leaves into a large salad bowl. You’ll want to have plenty of room for mixing in the dressing. You can massage the leaves some at this point if you want. We’ll be massaging them later when we add the dressing.

Make the Dressing

We’ll want to use a small food processor to make the dressing. We use the Cuisinart Mini Prep for this. You can also use a blender. Most blender bases fit on a pint mason jar so you don’t have to use the large pitcher for a small amount of dressing. We’ll start by putting in our grated Parmesan cheese. The grated cheese is more dense than shredded so there is more cheese in a half cup of grated. The grated Parmesan also seems to blend up smoother than the shredded cheese.

Dijon Mustard

Next we’ll add the Dijon mustard. you could use another kind of mustard but Dijon has a distinctive flavor that would be missing.

Anchovies

Anchovies are a traditional ingredient in Caesar dressing and we don’t want to skip adding these. We find jars of anchovy filets at the grocery store. Recently we have found tubes of anchovy paste that work as well since we are just grinding everything up anyway.

Worcestershire Sauce

Our secret sauce for many recipes is Worcestershire Sauce. This sauce is made from vinegar, sweeteners, anchovies and tamarind with other aromatics such as onion and garlic. You need to read the label because sometimes it can contain soy sauce, which has gluten. We use the Lea and Perrins brand which is gluten free. A couple shakes is all we need.

Lemon Zest

Next we will zest our lemon. We have a variety of microplanes that work for this job. We’ll use our finest cutting one to zest the whole lemon.

Lemon Juice

Now we will squeeze the juice of the lemon into our food processor. We like to use the squeezer tool because it helps keep the seeds out of our dressing. Now we want to blend this mixture until it is smooth.

Sesame Oil

Now we will emulsify some sesame oil into our dressing. Emulsification is spinning the oil and water molecules enough that they will combine. We just need to add the oil to our food processor and run it for 15 seconds or so until we have a smooth, creamy Caesar salad dressing.

Sliced Almonds

Now we will add our sliced almonds to the shredded kale in the mixing bowl. You can use whatever kind of nuts you want here. Pine nuts would work fine. We like the buttery crunch of the sliced almonds.

Dress the Salad

Now we will add the dressing to the kale and almonds. We’ll add about half the dressing, mix that in well and then add the rest and mix some more.

Massaging the Kale

One way we like to mix in the dressing is by massaging the kale with our hands. We use a kind of squeeze and release technique massaging in the dressing as we go.

Refrigerate the Kale Caesar Salad

Now that our salad is all put together we want to let it sit for at least 30 minutes. We found that this salad benefits from sitting and is even better the next day. So let it sit as long as you can before serving.

About Croutons

Croutons are a traditional part of a Caesar salad and we recommend putting them on when you serve this salad so they don’t just get soggy. You can have gluten free croutons but you’ll have to make them yourself. We haven’t found any pre-made ones. We have a video that shows how here. You’ll need to start with gluten free bread, which you can find in most stores these days. We have found gluten free bread to be very unsatisfying for anything else but it works great for croutons.

Cut a loaf of gluten free bread into cubes and put in a large mixing bowl. Add 1/3 cup melted butter, 1 1/2 teaspoons Italian seasoning, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 teaspoon salt and 2 teaspoons grated Parmesan. Mix well, lay out flat on a cookie sheet, bake 15 minutes, stir and bake at least 15 more minutes. If they are not crunchy enough, bake them longer.

Here are some other salad and dressing recipes you can make:

• Classic Caesar Salad
• Bacon Blue Cheese Chopped Wedge Salad
• Green Goddess Salad Dressing
• Wilted Spinach Salad

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