Kale Chips

If you've somehow missed that kale chips are a "thing," with recipes flooding cooking sites and packages of commercially made chips now turning up even in ordinary supermarkets, trust us: Tossing torn leaves of kale with oil and salt and baking them until crispy is a worthwhile endeavor. The slightly browned leaves take on a nutty, sweet taste and a pleasing, brittle texture.

But the standard oven approach isn't perfect: It's hard to get the leaves evenly browned; plus, it's difficult to drive off enough moisture so that the chips stay crispy when stored for more than a few hours. So when we noticed a few blogs promoting a microwave method, we were eager to give it a try.

We found that the microwave dehydrates the leaves evenly and thoroughly, so they stay crispy longer — and the chips cook a whole lot faster than they do in the oven.

Here's our take on the technique. 

Note: For the best texture, we prefer to use flatter Lacinato kale. We also found that collard greens work well, but we don't recommend curly-leaf kale, Swiss chard, or curly-leaf spinach, all of which turn dusty and crumbly when crisped.