Holiday season dishes tend to be heavy on sweet and fat. Which is why some of my favorite meals this time of year involve kale. It’s not that I don’t enjoy a good Yorkshire pudding, or a bowl of buttery potatoes, or a sweet baked ham. Rather, it’s that pigging out on decadent foods like those make a fiber-rich dish like kale salad taste and feel all the better.
Polls consistently show that the most popular New Year’s resolutions relate to diet, exercise, and weight loss. This makes sense, after weeks of binging. The problem is, by the time New Year’s Day rolls around, the damage has already been done, and losing weight is a lot harder than keeping it off in the first place.
Foods with a lot of sugar and carbohydrates are easy for your body to digest. Some starches will begin converting to sugar in your mouth as you chew, thanks to an enzyme in your saliva that doesn’t waste any time extracting calories from carbs. Insidiously, these foods can actually increase your appetite. Fats don’t give up their calories as easily as carbohydrates, because they require some finagling for your digestive system to crack, so at least fatty foods can fill you up and leave you sated. But their calories will still fatten you up.
Fiber, meanwhile, is the anti-calorie. It takes work to digest and sometimes can force your body to burn almost as many calories in digesting it as you reap from it.
The concept of easy-versus-hard calories is embodied in the glycemic index, which is a system that scores different foods by how much and how quickly they elevate your blood sugar levels. Pure sugar has a glycemic index of 100, which is as high as it gets. Sweet, processed foods can score in the high 80s, bread in the high 70s, and most vegetables in the 60s—whereas kale has a glycemic index of about 4, which is about the same score as your average Christmas sweater. But considerably more tasty.
While fiber gives your digestive system a workout, it also takes up space, which leaves less room in your belly for cream puffs and eggnog. And those fibers will help move everything through your bowels. Altogether, the more greens you eat this time of year, the more creative you can be with your resolutions for next year.
If you are one of those people to whom kale tastes like a stinky form of steel wool, rest assured that it doesn’t have to be that way. Kale chips, for one, are as crunchy as potato chips and legendary in their appeal to children, carnivores, sweet tooths, and others who aren’t on the usual short list of kale enthusiasts. Kale chip recipes abound on the internet. Today, we are going to focus on something different: a potato salad recipe, transplanted and adapted from a summertime graduation party where I first encountered it.
Kale Potato Salad
This isn’t your typical mayonnaise-heavy potato salad. Instead, it’s dressed with a miso-mustard vinaigrette. Without the mayo, you can see the flecks of kale plastered upon the potatoes. If you want to add mayo, and maybe some chopped hard-boiled eggs, that would run contrary to the austere theme of this column, but you won’t regret it. The same goes for bacon bits.This recipe is best made a day ahead of time. But if time is of the essence, don’t let that stop you.
- 4 cups diced red potatoes (they hold together best), peeled or not
- 1 bunch of kale
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup white vinegar
- 1/2 tablespoon mustard powder
- 1 tablespoon white miso (optional, but meaty)
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
- 1 teaspoon ground or dried rosemary
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 2 garlic cloves, and more to taste, minced or grated
- 1/2 cup minced onion
- 1/2 cup minced celery
- 1 cup finely diced cheddar cheese, preferably sharp and aged
- More salt, to taste
- Optional: red pepper flakes
Chop the kale and add it to a bowl large enough to accommodate the salad. Add the salt and massage the kale by gripping and releasing it repeatedly. This will tenderize the kale.
To make the dressing, combine the oil, vinegar, mustard powder, miso, herbs, and garlic. If using whole dried herbs, powder them between your fingers as you add them. Shake vigorously in a closed jar or otherwise stir very well.
When the potatoes are nearly tender, strain and pour them into a bowl. Add the kale to the hot potatoes and stir it in with a gentle motion so as not to crush the potatoes.
Add the onion, celery, cheddar, pepper flakes (if using), and dressing, and toss the salad. Add more salt and/or oil to taste.
