Molly Yeh’s Crispy Rice Salad with Kale Is a ‘Seriously Flavor-Exploding Side’
Food Network star Molly Yeh’s rice salad with kale is as wholesome and filling as it is easy to make. And it’s a hearty recipe to add to your spring menu rotation.
Here’s how to make the Spring Baking Championship host’s flavor-packed dish.
Yeh is a believer in the power of kale
The culinary personality’s enthusiasm for kale is contagious. On her blog, My Name is Yeh, she compared the robust green to bagged snacks: that’s how much she loves it.
“kale is so effing good, you guys,” she wrote. “it’s one of the only foods i know that has the addiction capacity of a cheeto but the nutritional facts of the opposite of a cheeto. i feel like i keep talking about kale and how awesome it is and i swear i’m not being paid by, like, the kale association of brooklyn to preach this stuff, but as kale season comes to a close, i figure i’ll show you all how i love to eat it so you can have a few last little hurrahs. and then i’ll shut up and start planning ramp recipes.”
The Girl Meets Farm star has grown her own kale and revealed her tips to Us Food for being smart about growing food including thinking “realistically with what you’re going to eat — don’t plant 200 radishes!
“Think realistically about what effort you’re going to put in. For example, after our first very buggy kale harvest, we opted not to plant leafy greens anymore and instead buy them at the store because they’re a lot more time-consuming to clean.”
Yeh’s recipe gets started with a spicy, flavorful dressing
Yeh, in her Food Network video, above, calls this recipe a “seriously flavor-exploding side. I make my dressing then fry up some rice and toss it all together with kale.”
To start, the chef has oil heating in a cast-iron pan in preparation to cook the rice.
The dressing is made up by placing in a bowl grated garlic and ginger and a “thinly sliced” Thai bird chile (“these guys are really little but they pack a good amount of heat”). Hot oil is added to the mixture to kick up the flavors.
Add to this mixture sugar, lime juice, and fish sauce (“I just love this stuff”). And that’s the dressing!
For this complete recipe, video, and reviews, visit Food Network’s site.
Molly Yeh’s crispy rice salad is a cinch to make
Now for the rest of the dish: peanuts, “which will add great crunch and nuttiness to the salad,” are “gently lowered” into the heating oil and fried “until they’re golden. It’ll just take a minute or two.” Once they’re done, the peanuts are added to the dressing in the bowl.
Yeh uses leftover rice for the recipe, “because it’s dried out a little bit.” The rice is added, again gently, to the oil to fry “for about five minutes.” Now the vegetables including the kale, shallots, and cilantro leaves are chopped and placed in a large bowl.
The rice is drained on paper towels and then placed on top of the tossed salad, along with the fried peanuts. Toss it all together and “as the kale coats in the dressing, that saltiness will help break it down.”
Enjoy this unique and texture-filled rice and kale salad from Molly Yeh!
