Recipe: Kale ‘Picker-Upper’ Soup

Kale ‘Picker-Upper’ Soup

From the Vitality Food Feature: Kale Cuisine

To make this super quick ‘picker-upper’ soup, first prepare Kale Tea (see recipe below).

Ingredients:

• 1½ cups kale tea in a pot
• 1 tsp miso
• ½ dried shiitake mushroom, broken into bits (Use a whole dried shiitake mushroom if you want more ‘chewy’ bits in the cup.)
• ¼ tsp garlic powder
• 1 drop each of sesame and chilli oil
• Pinch of black pepper

Add miso, shiitake mushroom, garlic powder, sesame oil, chilli oil, and black pepper to the pot of kale tea. Steep until mushroom pieces are soft. Garnish with minced chives or green onions upon serving. Recipe notes: If serving Kale Soup for lunch, dried instant noodles can be added to the broth. The recipe can be multiplied as needed, and dehydrated vegetables like onion flakes, grated carrot, and dried green peas can be added.

Kale ‘Detox’ Tea

In grandma’s old doctoring journals, she’s written that “a cup of kale tea is a good tonic for flushing impurities out of the system.” If you’re making this medicinal tea as a treatment for cold and ‘flu, grandma’s notes say that a pinch of fresh grated ginger root, a wedge of lemon, and a squirt of honey added to the pot speeds up the cure. Here’s her special ‘detox’ kale tea recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1½ cups water
• 1 handful of kale, shredded

Put shredded kale into a small saucepan. Cover with 1½ cups of water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 3 minutes. Remove from stove, cover and steep for 5 minutes. Pour tea into a mug and serve with a spoon in order to ‘get up’ the spent leaves for good measure after the tea is drunk. You can strain the tea, if you wish, but grandma wouldn’t hear of letting the dregs go to waste!