Recipe Review: Kale and Potato Puree

Last week we recommended a recipe for Kale and Potato Puree, a gorgeous green dish of warm and healthy winter eating from Gourmet. Well, we put our own advice to use quickly, and made it last weekend. It was delicious! True to form, though, we changed a few things. Here's what we did differently, and how we would recommend making this easy, 3-ingredient dish.

This recipe is basically mashed potatoes with boiled kale whipped in. Sound dreary? No way -- it's comforting, familiar, and yet fresh. It comes together quickly: You chop kale and boil it in salted water for a few minutes, then drain. Then you heat cream (in the same pot, of course -- we just rinsed it out and left the kale sitting in the colander in the sink) and boil peeled, chopped potatoes for about 20 minutes. Then the whole thing goes into the food processor and gets pureed.

That's the basic formula. Easy, easy, easy. (Plus it reheats like a charm.) Now, here's where we departed from it.

• Something different. We used regular kale this time, but next time we'd like to try using stronger-flavored greens, like mustard or broccoli rabe.

• Lighten up. Cream was a little heavy for us, so we substituted 2% milk for the cream. This worked just fine.

• Garlic! We were a little dubious of the flavor; we weren't sure whether kale, potatoes, and salt would be enough. So we put five cloves of peeled garlic in to simmer with the potatoes. These added just a gentle background flavor -- nothing too assertive.

• Mashed instead of whipped. We agreed with commenters that putting the potatoes through a food processor was begging for glue. Over-processed potatoes lose their creaminess and become sticky and unpleasantly heavy. So instead of putting everything in the processor or blender (which are hard to clean, anyway) we just dumped it all into our KitchenAid mixer and mixed in there. This made for easier cleanup, and left the potatoes and kale in larger chunks. Maybe that defeated the purpose of the recipe, but we found the texture to still be silky and delicious.

• Show off. We found that this mild-tasting puree was a great vehicle for good olive oil. We have several bottles we bought back from France, and a drizzle or two on this puree was a great way to show off their flavors.

Overall, this recipe is a keeper. We're making it again this weekend, in fact. Have you tried it yet?

Related: Recipe: Kale and Potato Gratin

(Images: Faith Durand)

Comments (9)

I made this, too. I don't mind working on a recipe if the results are great, but this was just so-so. I used milk for half the cream and wished I'd cut the cream altogether. I ended up adding a bunch of fleur de sel at the last minute and a few grates of parmesan. It was good, but just not great.

I'm making this tonight, using my KitchenAid like you advised. The garlic sounds good...did you then just mash it up with the potatoes, and it wasn't too strong?

I just made a pot of this stuff, using a combination of stock and milk. I spied a hunk of cream cheese in the fridge and tossed it in at the last minute before pureeing. It's terrific; I stood in the kitchen eating it straight out of the pot.

@eightisenough: simmering the garlic for a while mellows it out a lot. I didn't even notice a specific garlic taste, just a deepened flavor.

This reminds me of one of my favourite dishes - bubble and squeak - which is mashed potatoes and cooked greens. And very nice it is, too.

I just made a kale and potato pasta with parmesan and pine nuts from Deborah Madison's Local Flavors. Simple and fast.

I just made this last night and LOVED it (well, a version of it).

Someone already mentioned bubble and squeak similarities, which I also thought of. So after boiling the potatoes and blanching the kale, I saute it all together with garlic and olive oil (using a fork to mash the taters). A sprinkle of kosher salt and a drizzle of white truffle oil - voila - the healthiest homefries ever! I decided to leave out the cream for both health and flavor reasons. I thought it may mute the flavor too much, though a salty cheese would have worked great.

The little brown bits that result from the frying really add something to the flavor.

This is just like a classic Dutch dinner called Boerenkool, which is a staple in any good Dutch home. Usually they will eat it with some nice smoked sausage such as Rookworst. Some people like to top it with vinegar and others prefer some gravy on top. I have good memories of eating boerenkool growing up, and now I'm excited to try new versions with ingredients like Parmesan, truffle oil, and garlic!

Just made this and it came out well, both Wife and I went back for seconds.

We just made this with some of the recommended substitutions. I used mustard greens instead instead of kale, garlic in the potatoes, mixer instead of food processor, and cheese instead of heavy whipping cream (I misremembered the cream cheese mentioned above as a block of cheese).

I cut the block of cheddar cheese into smaller bits and partially melted it before putting it into the mixer. I wasn't sure how to cook the mustard greens. I tried the "quick-boil" method - I boil the greens only with the water that clings to the mustard green after rinsing for 2-4 minutes.

Did other people chop the greens or just tear it into bits?

Yumm this brings me back to my mothers kitchen, she's from Holland where the winter version of this was made with Endives. The Dutch recipe calls for bacon crumbles and fat not olive oil. But, I love this new version with Kale and EVOO. Thanks