How to cook kale for pasta

Pasta is where kale stops being a salad problem. It wants fat, salt, garlic and a few minutes of real heat, and a pan of pasta supplies all four without anyone having to pretend they are enjoying a health food.

Cook it before it meets the pasta

Kale is not spinach and will not collapse if you throw it at hot pasta. Slice the leaves thin, get garlic going in oil, then add the kale with a splash of water or stock. Cover for two to three minutes, then uncover and give it another two to five — four to eight minutes in total, the longer end for curly, the shorter for young lacinato.

Two things to get right. Do not crowd the pan. Wet kale packed in tight steams unevenly and goes sulfurous, which is the flavour most people think of as "tasting like kale". And add the acid at the end — lemon at the start slows the softening down; lemon at the end is what makes the plate taste finished.

Thin ribbons, and the stems go in first

Strip the leaves off the stems and roll them up like a cigar before slicing, so you get fine ribbons rather than sheets. Big torn pieces are what makes kale feel like an obligation in a bowl of pasta — thin ribbons distribute and behave like part of the sauce.

The stems are worth using, just not at the same time. Sliced thin and given five to eight minutes in the pan before the leaves arrive, they hold a bit of bite that works well against soft pasta. Woody ones from a mature bunch are not worth the trouble.

What you can make tonight

Kale and pasta needs almost nothing else — garlic, oil, chilli, a hard cheese. Tell FridgeToForks what you have and it will tell you which of these is actually cookable right now and what you are missing.

What to put with it

Kale can take more assertive company than spinach ever could, which is the advantage of the bitterness rather than a problem to be hidden. Chilli and garlic are the obvious pair. Anchovy melted into the oil at the start disappears completely and makes the whole pan taste deeper without tasting of fish. Sausage meat browned first, then the kale cooked in its fat, is the version most people would order in a restaurant. A hard salty cheese at the end does the same job from the other direction. What kale does not want is a delicate cream sauce, which it will simply overpower.

Finish it in the pan, not the colander

This is where kale pasta is won or lost. Pull the pasta out slightly underdone, move it into the pan with the kale and a little of its cooking water, and toss it hard over the heat until the sauce coats rather than pools. The starch in that water is what binds oil, greens and pasta into one thing instead of three.

It matters more with kale than with most things, because kale releases very little of its own liquid to help you. If you want the longer version, it is the same technique as finishing any fresh pasta.