nacho | Earthgiven Kitchen

Hi, friends! I’ve been post-less for a week, having been on holidays, soaking up some sun and family time at a cottage in Muskoka. It was a wonderful time. We brought our own food with us, but there wasn’t room to bring my favourite food equipment like juicer, food processor and dehydrator, so I made as much food as I could ahead of time, like raw granola, and packed it with us.

I’ve only had my dehydrator for a few months so I’m still amazed at the variety of healthy food I can easily make with it and the taste quality. I’m enjoying making raw crackers in my dehydrator lately. Here’s my favourite so far: nacho crackers!

The idea came from my nacho kale chips recipe, which I selected as my entry for the first Healthy Vegan Fridays blog party this week. Every week there will be a new list of delicious recipes featuring whole ingredients to peruse, so now I know where to head the next I’m looking for inspiration. Check it out!

I also loved these crackers enough to send them to my vegan food swap partner Gabby @ The Veggie Nook this month. Hope she likes them as much as I do! I used to love store-bought crackers, now I can’t believe I ate all that sodium, sugar and preservatives, thinking they were a “healthy” snack. These nacho crackers are about as healthy as you can get, plus they are raw, sugar-free and gluten-free.

Raw Nacho Crackers
2/3 cup raw nuts (I used a mix of Brazil nuts and almonds)
1/3 cup raw sunflower seeds
1 cup ground flax
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped red pepper
1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1 tsp Spicy Herbamare seasoning
1 tsp agave syrup
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp black pepper

Soak the nuts and seeds in 2 cups of filtered water for at least an hour and preferably several hours. Empty the nuts and seeds including the soaking water into a food processor and combine. Add the celery, red pepper and sun-dried tomatoes and combine again. Mix the nutritional yeast, Herbamare and spices together in a separate bowl, then add the spice mixture and combine again until uniformly mixed. Note: to be truly raw, you will want to choose sun or dehydrator-dried tomatoes and raw spices where possible.

Pour onto Paraflexx sheets and smooth out with a spatula so they are uniformly thin, like giant crepes. Dehydrate at 105 degrees for several hours, until crispy. After about five hours, when they are starting to firm up, flip them by placing another Paraflexx sheet and tray on top of the crackers, flipping upside down, peeling off the top sheet and returning them to the dehydrator on the new tray. You can either pull the crackers out when they are nearly done but not crisp and slice them into rectangles with a knife and return to the dehydrator to finish crisping up, or wait until they are as firm and dry as you like and break them into small pieces, like the ones shown in my photos.

They were great on their own and awesome topped with Tofutti cream cheese and cucumber and olive slices and a dash of black pepper! A perfect summer appetizer.

I wish I could take credit for that great line; it was Post Punk Kitchen’s facebook status the other day. But it makes a great introduction for a recipe about delectable, crispy, nacho kale chips!

These chips are the best things to ever come out of my dehydrator! If you don’t have a dehydrator, you could try these in an oven on low heat but I never got great results from kale chips in an oven; some pieces get burned, other pieces are soggy. From the dehydrator, these are perfectly crispy and crunchy, like your favourite potato chip.

A dehydrator doesn’t just pull moisture out, it intensifies the flavours of the ingredients while preserving all the nutrients. I have an Excalibur Dehydrator, bought from Upaya Naturals.

I tried kale chips at a health fair in April and was blown away by the taste. I didn’t have the recipe but knew it had red pepper, cashews and jalapeño. It was slightly too spicy for my taste so I decided to try to make my own jalapeño-free version. As my friend said when she sampled one of mine at the Upcylcing Party: “These taste like Doritos!”

Nacho Kale Chips
1 large bunch of kale (we like curly kale but any kind will work), washed and patted dry
1 red pepper
1 cup raw cashews, soaked several hours, then drained and rinsed (why soak nuts first)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
a splash of lemon juice
1 cup nutritional yeast
1 Tbsp olive oil
optional herbs and spices: 1/4 tsp chipotle chili powder, 2 tsp Italian seasoning, pinch of crushed chilies, dash of black pepper and 2 Tbsp fresh chives, finely diced
sea salt or Herbamare seasoning

You can adjust the seasoning to suit what you like and have on hand, but the red pepper, cashews, garlic, salt and nutritional yeast are the key ingredients. I had tons of chives in my garden, so I threw them in.

In a food processor or blender, combine all ingredients except for the sea salt/Herbamare seasoning and process until smooth. Cut tough stems off the kale and tear into chip-sized pieces.

Prepare to get messy. The cashew sauce gets massaged into the kale on both sides, so use your hands, then spread the kale pieces on dehydrator trays covered with Paraflexx sheets. Sprinkle with salt/Herbamare to your liking.

Dehydrate at 105 degrees for about 8 hours or all chips dry and crispy.

Kale chips coming out the dehydrator. I try not to eat them all!

Update July 28, 2012: I love these chips so much I shared them for the first Healthy Vegan Fridays blog party, hosted by The Everyday Vegan Girl, Carrie On Vegan and The Veggie Nook.