Our new veggie discovery this year was KALE! It took about 5 tries and now both of my kids love kale. Of course, the first time I served it to them was as a chip, baked in the oven with a little bit of olive oil, sea salt and parmesan cheese. Now that they’re convinced they like kale, I feel like I’ve got full reign to try more dishes on them.
And, we’re growing three different kale plants in our garden too so I had to find more uses for this leafy green.
Since it’s been so hot, I figured I’d try to make a cold kale salad using our garden bounty and hoped that my son remembers how much he enjoyed the kale chips to give this a try.
This salad is too easy and too tasty to pass up. There’s no culinary skill required. You only need to make the dressing and drizzle it on top the kale and green beans and chill it in the fridge until you’re ready to serve. I would recommend serving the green beans uncooked. I cooked mine the first time and they were too soft and flimsy in the salad. The second time around I used raw beans and their crunch was a nice compliment to the kale.
The lemony dressing makes the salad, adding a nice sweet tangy flavor to the crisp lettuce and beans. I had a bunch of dried cranberries laying around so tossed them in too, to augment the sweet honey flavor versus the tart lemon.
Without any hesitation, my son tried the salad and it immediately received two thumbs up.
It’s easy, light, refreshing and used veggies direct from our garden.
What could be better than that?
Marinated Kale and Green Bean Salad (adapted from Bon Appetit)
Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1 large bunch Tuscan kale
- kosher salt
- 1 lb. green beans
- 1/2 cup dried cranberries
- 1/4 cup finely grated Parmesan
Instructions:
- Combine oil, lemon juice, honey in a large bowl.
- Add kale, toss and coat.
- Season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Let kale mixture sit at room temperature for 1-2 hours or cover and chill.
- Add green beans to kale mixture (either cooked or raw- we prefer raw), toss and coat.
- Top with dried cranberries and grated parmesan cheese (add in almond slivers or any other dried fruit too).
As always, your recipe looks fab! I’m learning that I really like kale, didn’t use to. This is one I’m going to try for dinner tonight. Thanks for the great post!