Kale is a vegetable that is very popular in the Netherlands and Portugal. Kale is very healthy and rich in vitamins and microelements. So let’s enrich it with a daily diet. How to cook kale? What should you know about kale? We’ll deliver you quite a few bits of info.
What is kale?
Kale is a vegetable whose nutritional value and health properties were already appreciated in ancient times. Often, it is still more used to decorate platters than to eat. This is a huge mistake because kale prevents many serious diseases such as cancer and heart disease.
The kale season is in autumn; after frost, the leaves are even tastier, lose their sharp cabbage taste. Young leaves can be eaten raw, from older (larger) you always have to cut the veins, the leaves must be boiled, stewed or fried.
How to cook kale?
Cut the kale into thick strips, put into boiling water for 5 minutes, strain. Then fry in butter for a while, salt it. You can also stew chopped leaves in a pan with butter and a drip of water (7-10 minutes), at the end adding chopped garlic and chillies and a few fillets of anchovies. Alternatively, you can pour a little cream. A great pasta sauce or an addition to fried eggs comes out.
Keep the kale in the fridge in a plastic bag, up to 3 days. You can also freeze it: blanch the leaves, put them in cold water, squeeze them, put them in a bag, and? In the freezer.
Kale added to soups (e.g. minestrone, beans), casseroles, pastas, stuffing is a very good idea. You can even squeeze the juice in a juicer and mix it with pineapple or beet juice.
Kale – what’s good about it?
Kale contains carotenoids – antioxidants that also inhibit harmful oxidative processes, and thus can prevent the development of cancer. Carotenoids have been shown to reduce the incidence of cancers such as oral, larynx, esophageal and bladder cancers.
It is worth knowing that the color given by carotenoids (i.e. yellow, orange or red) in kale is masked with chlorophyll – a green dye, which also has an antioxidant effect and supports the processes of cleansing the body – creates strong connections with some toxic compounds (including some carcinogens) ), thanks to which less amount of harmful compounds reaches the body’s tissues.
Kale is also a treasury of another anti-cancer substance – vitamin K, which also inhibits the development of some cancers, including breast, ovarian, colon, gallbladder, liver cancer. As experts from the Institute of Food and Nutrition argue, its deficiency may be the reason for an increased risk of cancer development.
Did you know that kale:
- has more vitamin C than orange,
- has more vitamin A than any green vegetables,
- is an excellent source of vitamin K,
- is an excellent source of alpha linoleic acid (ALA). It’s a type of omega-3 fatty acid. It is necessary for the proper functioning of the brain. It also reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes and affects normal heart function.
- has more calcium than milk.
