Air-Fryer Old Bay Crispy Kale Chips

Bagged kale chips have an unearned bad reputation. The mass- produced versions are usually dehydrated rather than baked or fried, which makes them chewy rather than crisp; they're also generally coated in cashew "cheese" sauces that make them gummy. The home version — kale leaves torn into chip-sized pieces, tossed with olive oil and seasoning, then air-fried at low heat — is something else entirely. Properly made, kale chips shatter when you bite them. They taste like the green plant they came from, intensified by salt and spice.

The seasoning here is Old Bay — the Maryland-Chesapeake spice mix that contains celery salt, paprika, mustard, bay leaves, and a couple of dozen other ingredients in proportions the McCormick company has kept secret since 1939. It's traditionally used on seafood (Maryland crab boils, shrimp), but it makes an extraordinary seasoning for vegetables. The celery salt and the bay leaf together give kale a flavour that's somewhere between "healthy snack" and "actual crab boil." It's distinctive and slightly addictive.

The photo shows them simply plated — a white round shallow bowl piled with darkened-green kale fragments, on a blue-and-white- striped napkin. A second pile of chips on a small piece of parchment in the background. This is what a kale chip should look like: deep green, slightly translucent at the edges, with visible seasoning specks. Not bagged. Not chewy. Crisp.

A note on the kale: curly kale (the green leafy ribboned kind) works best for chips. Lacinato (dinosaur kale, dark and flat) also works but is denser and takes a minute longer. Don't try this with baby kale — too thin, burns instantly.