What to Do with Kale? How about Asian Stiry-Fry Style?

Most Asians, at least the ones like me who didn't come to CA till after middle school, are not very familiar with kale.

I remember the very first time,
Its big, luscious leaf lured me to bring a big bundle home,
Man oh man, looks can be deceiving,
Unlike its bright green color and beautiful curls on the edges, this green veggie was so tough and chewy to munch on, definitely not my favorite type of vegetable.

But that pretty color kept fooling me into bringing the vegetable home over and over again,
Finally, after several trials and errors,
I found my top two ways to prepare kale:
Frying or baking kale into vegetable ships or simple Asian stir-fry.

Ingredients?

1 bundle of kale
4 slices of smoked bacon
6 cremini mushroom
3 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon of unsalted butter
Some soy sauce
Some olive oil
Some sea salt
Some freshly ground black pepper

How?

Chop the bacon into bite sizes and toss to the pan,
Turn to high heat and drizzle some olive oil till evenly coating the bottom of the pan,
Cook for about 2 minutes or till the bacon grease happily join the olive oil inside the pan.

Add in chopped garlic along with some salt and pepper,
Don't finely chop the cloves because it'll get burned easily on a stove,
Just a few rough chops go a long way.

Cook the garlic till the color on the edges turned slightly brown but not burned,
Toss in kale that has already been chopped into large bite sizes,
Add about 1 tablespoon of soy sauce,
Cook for a few minutes, or till the leaves finally wilted down a bit,
Once done, transfer the greens onto the center of a big plate, leave the grease in the pan.

From the same pan, add 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter and toss in chopped mushroom,
About one minute,
Add about 1 to 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and cook till the liquid has been fully absorbed by the mushroom,
Once done, pour the mushrooms onto the plate, circle the already stirred-fry kale -

Unlike simply boiling then shocking the vegetable,
My stir-fry way actually cooked the tough leaves longer, which helped in softening the texture a bit.

Using "smoked" bacon is also a key because the sweetness from the meat addes more flavor to kale,
If you tried kale before and doesn't like it, how about giving this vegetable one more chance by stir-frying it?

Cindy's Rating: 7