My favorite Kale recipe

I've been following mostly cooking blogs lately, browsing food at work that I won't have time to make anytime soon, in a sort of window-shopping mode. While, I'm definitely going to make some baked ziti in my crockpot this week, I had to come up with something quick tonight. But, I haven't gone shopping in awhile, and there's a back-log of stored things in the freezer and in cans. So, I set out to see what I could pull together.

I had fairly fresh chicken breasts and Ray's Barbeque Sauce (cheap stuff at Giant Eagle that's not bad), and a can of baked beans, so that was pretty good. And there was salad stuff leftover from last night that needed to be used, too. But, Drew & I don't get that many vegetables when we're in normal, working too much mode (there's a lot of pizza, ramen, and random snacks as meals; it's almost like we're both pathetic bachelors), and so I wanted something else green-ish.

Luckily, I had a gigantic and continuing crop of kale this summer, and while I had the time, I kept picking, cleaning, blanching, and freezing small bunches of it every week or two. So I have a lot of frozen kale. I like kale in soup (and I have some of that frozen too), but needed something quicker. So, I made this:

Kale, Onions & Garlic

frozen kale (I have no idea how much I officially used, enough to feed 2 people)
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced (to serve 2 people, depend on how much you like garlic)
1/2 onion, sliced pretty thin
chili oil
salt & pepper (optional)

Heat the oil in a cast-iron skillet, or some other vastly inferior type of skillet. Throw in the garlic and let it brown a little. Toss in the onions and let them cook until they start softening. Chop up the kale if necessary, and toss that in too. Break up any frozen lumps of kale, let it cook 1-2 minutes, then cover the whole thing and let it cook some more. After about 5 minutes, I remembered that spices are good, and tossed in a handful of salt too. Because I don't cook my kale for that long before freezing it, it's still pretty crunchy when I use it, and this could probably cook for 10 minutes without making it too mushy.

I adapted this from a Food & Wine magazine recipe, that had blackened onion rings with kale, and was really good, but I didn't want to do the whole onion ring thing, as it required a few different sessions in the oven & I couldn't locate the magazine either. This works pretty well anyway, and I've done it roasted with diced potatoes too. Kale is pretty good for you, has a nice spicy flavor, so I'm happy to have figured out how to use it for normal, quick meals. And barbeque chicken is really good.