Swiss Chard Chips in a Nu-Wave Oven!

Arugula Chips? Not exactly! It is actually Swiss Chard! In my original post, I mistakenly called my greens arugula, but they are surely NOT! Swiss Chard, with the bright red stalks, is the first leaf we dehydrated to make Chard Chips! Now, on to the post...You've probably heard of people making Kale "chips", dried Kale pieces, salted and yummy? Well, this is the same thing, only with Swiss Chard and collard greens! Oh, and made in our Nu-wave Oven!

Crispy and Delightful!

But...how do they TASTE?

Very Crispy!

YUMMMMMY!!!

To make: Wash and dry (thoroughly) large leafed Swiss Chard, Collard leaves or, of course, KALE!! Any big, leafy, firm green should work. After you dry them, go ahead and tear the leaves from the hard stem in nice,  large chunks, OR you can just leave them whole and remove the bottom stem part. Place in a large bowl (serving dish works great) and drizzle a bit of olive oil over the leaves...just a bit. You can add more later if you need it, but you don't want them too saturated. 

Now take one of the leaves and start rubbing the oil into the other leaves until they are well coated, glossy and in their happy place! When finished, don't waste that oil on your hands...rub it into your hands, elbows, whatever! Great for the skin! 

Next, salt (and or pepper) to taste with regular salt or sea salt. Word of caution here..we used sea salt first and it was VERY salty..a bit too much, though still delicious. The second batch we did we used standard table salt, very lightly and it was JUST RIGHT!!!

Now, if you have the Nu-Wave oven, just place the leaves in a single layer, really close together is fine, and even overlapping a bit is ok..just not too much. I used the larger rack on the 1" level and a layer of leaves here, then placed the smaller rack on top of that and another layer there. I then removed the racks together (as the smaller sits atop the larger perfectly) and did another layer on the bottom liner pan. I then set the oven to 60 minutes and on power of 2 (low power is important! 1 would work too).  Then I checked after 15 minutes and there was some condensation, this is ok, it goes away! I vented to peek and then resumed at same power for another 10-15 minutes, until crispy! They were gorgeous! Tasted wonderful and were VERY crispy! My daughter and I loved them! 

Our second batch was with Collard Greens (we used the Swiss Chard first). This time we used the table salt. The leaves were lighter, so they blew around the dome a bit. After trying several times to replace them on the rack, I gave up and just let them fly around! This is how they looked....

2 racks and bottom pan with layers

The leaves flew around a bit...

You can see the bottom leaves "stick" to the bottom

Simply lift them gently, they pop right up!

A bit wet still underneath..so flipped and placed on rack..

Dry them on this side for a few more minutes on low power (1 or 2)

That's it! While I've been meaning to have Kale chips for some time now, we receive lots of greens from our farm share (CSA) and I wanted to use what we have. As soon as we get more kale, we are making more chips! They turned out really great! The collard greens had a much more "woodsy" or plant-like flavor than the Chard. We liked the Chard best, but both are bound to be gone completely before dinner. Just wanted to share our Nu-wave dehydration results with you all! Of course, most people will just use their oven set on about 200 or 225 degrees and possibly with the door cracked, for about 20-45 minutes. They dry rather quickly if you don't use too much olive oil on them. Just keep an eye on them and keep the temp low so they don't burn. Every oven varies so closely watch your first batch so you can establish a baseline time-line for your green chips!  Hope you try them out too!