This article originally appeared in Food52.
Kale has lived a thousand lives.
It’s spent decades as a frilly, slow-wilting garnish for salad bars and shrimp towers alike. Since the dawn of the 21st century, it’s moonlighted as a status symbol for the tote-touting, farmers-market-evangelizing city dweller. It found an especially bright 15 minutes of fame as the single word emblazoned on a sweatshirt Beyoncé wore in her music video for “7/11.” It was roasted into chips by Gwyneth Paltrow on primetime television.
It’s been the hero of 2,000-word profiles and the villain of snappy teardowns. It’s frost-resistant, enjoys a harvest during the time of year when the rest of us hibernate, and one cup of it has 134 percent of your daily recommended vitamin C, for the love of god. So there’s little to say about the leafy green that ceaseless trend pieces haven’t already bellowed.