smoked kale.

Just so I could stop talking about it, I made it for lunch today. And it's delicious, a really good side dish. Ze problem is...it's going to be a bitch to translate the recipe for repeatable home cooking.

Cue whiny verbiage that no one cares about: the biggest issue is that the original recipe says "salt and sugar to taste", and the only way I could get mine to taste right (and by "right", I mean like Southern-cooked greens) was to salt and sugar my individual portions after I'd filled my bowl via a slotted spoon: otherwise the salt and sugar all got lost in the pot liquid. I'm thinking I'll use less water and more butter next time, and just go for broke on salting and sugaring the cooking liquid.

Also: We have no smoker, so the dreaded Liquid Smoke was called off the bench. If you have a smoker, cold-smoking the kale for 5 minutes is the thing to do. For me, Liquid Smoke was just fine. I think it's no longer the embarrassing cheat it used to be. Unless you're a real BBQ person, and then of course you're right, it's evil.

All that said, it really was good, and so I'm going to work on it a bit. This is just a placeholder recipe until I can buy some unprocessed heads of kale this week and try it again.

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smoked kale.

50gr butter

1 onion, brunoised

5 drops liquid smoke

1 clove garlic

250gr kale (mine was pre chopped, that's how I know how much I had)

1 liter water

2 tbsp cider vinegar

lots of salt and sugar to taste

Serves, eh...4 probably.

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