Genius Recipes
For Smitten Kitchen's Genius Popcorn, Add ... a Pound of Greens?
Oh hey, Super Bowl, Oscar parties, and snowday movie marathons.
Every week in Genius Recipes—often with your help!—Food52 Creative Director and lifelong Genius-hunter Kristen Miglore is unearthing recipes that will change the way you cook.
Sometimes the real moments of genius in cooking come not from a plan well-executed, but from making good of the inedible mess in front of you.
Which explains how the best popcorn I’ve ever made—the recipe that drove the most repeat-clawfuls in a sitting till not even one half-popped kernel remained—came from a rather low moment in the kitchen for Deb Perelman, the founder of the endlessly popular blog-turned-home-cooking-empire, Smitten Kitchen. The mess, in this case, was kale chips.
“The first time I made kale chips, I thought I had done something wrong, or at least was being punished for some unobserved slight,” Perelman writes in her triumphant second cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Every Day. Too dry, too bitter, too flat. Decisively not a chip.
“So I did the only sensible thing and ground the chips into a powder, renamed it ‘kale dust’ so it would sound as magical as possible, and sprinkled it over freshly popped popcorn.”
Whether you share Deb’s mistrust of kale chips (or kale in general), know that great things can be achieved by bashing them up. In magic dust form, you get the deep flavor of toasted greens scattered across the snackable crunch of popcorn, plus a superfine texture and well-distributed salt.
Here, the dust commingles with other friends of kale you’ve seen in pastas and salads: olive oil, salt, pepper, funky aged cheese (in this case, Pecorino Romano)—all of which explains why Oprah referred to this recipe as cacio e pepe popcorn. In this case, cacio e pepe translates to cheese and pepper and oh, did we mention? An entire bunch of kale.
The effect is a little like the movie-theater Cheetos popcorn our Video Programming Director Ishita Singh tipped me off to—except, when you accidentally polish off a bowl, you’ve eaten close to a pound of greens (not Cheeto dust).
Deb points out that you could use kale chips from the store, but making them at home is much less of a project than I’d assumed. I was ready to plan for meticulously patting leaves dry and hours of dehydrating. These take 15 minutes at 300°F to parch to a crisp, and Deb even says you can leave some water clinging. No biggie.
At every step, Deb counsels and soothes, anticipating our worries like only someone who’s fielded 14 years of reader recipe questions can. In addition to the laidback non-squeegeeing of the kale, as we’re trying to smear a tablespoon of olive oil on two large baking sheets, she tells us, “The thinnest coat is just fine”—enough that the leaves don’t accidentally glue themselves there. And if we don’t have a mortar and pestle? A cocktail muddler in a bowl works, too.
Once you find yourself making this often as I have, you can dabble in a rainbow of other colorful, wholesome popcorn toppers—from spirulina to turmeric to tomato.
And if you end up with an inedible mess, you’ll know what to do.
| 1 | bundle of Lacinato kale (aka dinosaur or Tuscan) (usually 9 to 10 ounces or 255 to 285 grams; if using curly kale, go for a 1-pound (454g) bunch)) |
| 1 | tablespoon (15 ml) olive oil |
| Fine sea salt |
| 1 | bundle of Lacinato kale (aka dinosaur or Tuscan) (usually 9 to 10 ounces or 255 to 285 grams; if using curly kale, go for a 1-pound (454g) bunch)) |
| 1 | tablespoon (15 ml) olive oil |
| Fine sea salt |
| 4 to 5 | tablespoons (60 to 75 ml) olive oil |
| 1/3 | cup (70 grams) popcorn kernels |
| 2/3 | cup (95 grams) finely grated Pecorino Romano |
| Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste |
| 4 to 5 | tablespoons (60 to 75 ml) olive oil |
| 1/3 | cup (70 grams) popcorn kernels |
| 2/3 | cup (95 grams) finely grated Pecorino Romano |
| Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste |
Got a genius recipe to share—from a classic cookbook, an online source, or anywhere, really? Perhaps something perfect for beginners? Please send it my way (and tell me what's so smart about it) at [email protected]—thank you to Food52er Nicole Platte for this one!
From our new podcast network, The Genius Recipe Tapes is lifelong Genius hunter Kristen Miglore’s 10-year-strong column in audio form, featuring all the uncut gems from the weekly column and video series. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss out.
Listen & Subscribe
Written by: Kristen Miglore
Popular on Food52
22 Comments
Join The Conversation