Kale Chips in Air Fryer
Kale chips in an air fryer is the quickest and best way to make these healthy chips. With a cook time of less than 5 minutes, you can enjoy these without the guilt. Vegan, Whole30, dairy free, low carb, keto, and gluten free.
Equipment
Ingredients
- Half a bunch of kale 4 oz- This is this weight before you trim the stem from the leaves. If you buy pretrimmed bagged kale, you'll need about 2-2.5 oz per batch since the center stem section is already removed.
- 2 teaspoon olive oil
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
Instructions
Prep
- Wash and dry the kale. This is important, as wet kale turns into soggy kale chips since it won't crisp properly. Dry with paper towels. (if using garden kale, discard the leaves with small holes since there's a good chance it still has tiny bugs or worms.)
- Cut the kale from the stems, and then dry. Feel free to save any of the tiny kale leaves that are too small to turn into chips and add them to your next salad. The easiest way to cut the stems is to stack the kale pieces like a book and cut them all at once along the stem.
- After you trim the kale, tear them into large bite-sized pieces
Season The Kale
- In a medium-sized bowl, mix the kale prepped pieces, olive oil, sea salt, and pepper. Massage the leaves with your hands to help get the oil as evenly distributed as possible. Sprinkle on any optional seasoning you are adding after massaging.
- Preheat air fryer at 300F for 3-5 minutes.
- Air fry on 300F for 3-5 minutes depending on the style of air fryer you are using.
- If you are using an oven-style fryer, you won't need to flip the kale chips. Simply make sure you are not overloading the tray so the warm air can move around. In the Omni fryer, we found that the chips did not fly around at all. Cook for 4-5 minutes.
- If you are using a basket-syle fryer, check on your kale chips after 3-minutes. Your kale pieces will fly around more in the basket so you may need to rearrange pieces in the basket. Cook for an additional 1-2 minutes. Be sure to watch for chip flying up into your burner.
Notes
- Be sure you dry your kale completely. If you attempt to make kale chips with soggy kale, you will get soggy kale chips.
- If you have less kale than we used here, decrease the oil as well. Too much oil will result in soggy kale chips.
- Air fry at 300F to prevent your kale chips from burning in the fryer.
- Optional seasonings - everything but the bagel seasoning, elotes seasoning, popcorn seasoning, cheese powder, garlic salt, the sky is the limit!
- Toaster oven style air fryer - We use the Onmi and found we didn't need to flip the kale chips since it does a good job circulating on both sides. Air fry for 4-5 minutes depending on how crispy you want your chips. If you are using a toaster-oven style fryer you can slightly overlap the kale as they will shrink during cooking.
- Smaller basket style air fryer - Our basket style fryer is a 3.2L Farberware and we couldn't cook as many kale chips at one time, but they do cook up quickly! Layering and stacking the kale chips does work fine, but be sure to check on them after 3-minutes.
- If the kale leaves are blowing around in your air fryer, add a rack on top to prevent that. The air fryer fan is what circulates the air and helps to get the food really crisp in an air fryer. That same fan will blow lightweight food around inside too, as we discovered with our air fryer smores experiments!
Nutrition
Calories: 18kcalFat: 2gSaturated Fat: 0.3gPolyunsaturated Fat: 0.2gMonounsaturated Fat: 1gSodium: 145mgPotassium: 0.1mgCalcium: 0.1mgIron: 0.01mg
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