^{originally published February 2007, updated January 2025}

What is Houston's Emerald Kale Salad? | Ingredients | What Kind of Kale Best for Salad? | How to Make Houston's Kale Salad Dupe | Is Houston's Kale Salad Healthy?

Is this Houston's Emerald Kale Salad Copycat?

How do you improve upon the perfection that is the Emerald Kale Salad at Houston's—nutrient-dense kale, crisp cabbage, bright fresh herbs, and of course that absolutely drinkable crunchy Roasted Peanut Vinaigrette? You don't, really, other than actually figuring out how to make it at home and of course most importantly, replacing the worst ingredient, cilantro, with parsley.

Ingredients You Need for Houston's Kale Salad

These are the ingredients you need for this Houston's Kale Salad dupe recipe:

• Kale, obviously!
• Green cabbage
• Green onions
• Fresh mint and parsley
• Peanuts
• Parmesan Cheese
• Chicken, cooked and shredded

And for the Roasted Peanut Vinaigrette

• Rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons 
• Lemon juice, 2 tablespoons
• Avocado oil, 2 tablespoons
• Peanut butter, 2 tablespoon
• Maple syrup, 1 tablespoon
• Garlic, 1 clove
• Sea salt, 1 teaspoon
• Red pepper powder, ¼ teaspoon

What is the Best Kind of Kale for Salad?

Green, curly kale is the one I use in this recipe, and the one in Houston's version.

However, any type of kale—curly green, lacinato, red—works for this salad, and the nutritional profiles across the types are generally fairly similar. Some varieties are milder in flavor than others, but in this kale salad recipe, the differences are not noticeable because of the flavors of the other ingredients, namely the dressing.

The Kale Salad in these photos is made with "curly" kale, which is a lighter, brighter green with the ruffled edges, makes the salad a brighter, slightly more vibrant green.

To be honest though, I usually prefer the darker green lacinato/Tuscan/dinosaur kale, which has long skinny, "bumpy" leaves. The reason I generally prefer this kind of kale in cooking applications is that it's just easier to wash. Sometimes you gotta just go with practicality.

Baby kale has the mildest flavor and tbh, I could eat this version of kale in a salad.

Additional Ingredients Notes and Resources

Cabbage. This salad uses your standard everyday green cabbage, which is so underrated as a vegetable and a salad base imho. However, use whatever cabbage you have or prefer, like napa cabbage and even purple cabbage.

Peanuts. Use roasted, salted peanuts. Roasting amplifies the umami of the peanuts, and also makes them crunchy. Any other roasted salted nut that you like—almonds, cashews, walnuts—will work here.

Parmesan cheese. I buy intact blocks of Parmigianno-reggiano cheese and shred or grate it myself so I can be sure that I am getting only cheese with no other additives or fillers. You can always buy pre-shredded or grated parmesan. The grated parmesan in green canisters on shelves is not ideal and if that's your only option, it's better to leave the cheese out.

Dressing Ingredients Notes

Rice Vinegar. I use this brand organic brown rice vinegar. If you don't have rice vinegar, use any other light/mild vinegar like apple cider vinegar or white wine vinegar.

Avocado oil. I use this Avocado Oil as my every day neutral-flavored cooking oil. If you don't have avocado oil, use olive oil, though olive oil has quite a distinctive flavor.

Peanut butter. For the best texture, use creamy peanut butter, preferably with no salt and no sugar added so you can add the salt and sweetness yourself. The brand I used in these photos is this organic one.

Maple Syrup. I use this organic maple syrup . You can substitute with other sweetener of choice. Though still "sugar," maple syrup has a lower glycemic index (GI) than white sugar, may provide antioxidant benefits from naturally occurring phenols, and because it tastes sweeter than refined white sugar, you can use a little less in certain recipes like this one. (source)

Red pepper powder. I use gochugaru, a Korean red pepper powder with an earthy flavor and a medium spicy heat, mostly because that's what I have the most of and sits right on my countertop. You can use Italian crushed red pepper flakes, cayenne pepper, and even a spicy paprika.

Salt. Salt is an obvious and ubiquitous ingredient. I use this Kosher salt.

Green onions, parsley, mint and any other fresh produce from either the Santa Monica Farmers' Market on Wednesday, Mar Vista Farmers Market on Sunday, or Whole Foods Market when I can't find what I need at the farmers' market.

How Much Kale is in 1 Bunch?

Because kale come in so many different sizes and shapes like so many um, other things, it's better to "measure" kale by weight, not by "bunch." However, grocery stores don't sell kale by weight, and people don't buy kale by weight either.

According to research, one average bunch of kale weighs about ½ pound, and yields about 6 cups of firmly packed chopped kale. So you need a total of 1 bunch of kale for this salad.

You will more than likely become hyper-fixated/obsessed/addicted to the Kale White Bean Salad though, so it's better to go over and have leftovers!

Instructions for How to Make Houston's Emerald Kale Salad Dupe

The hardest step in making this salad is washing the kale. I'm not kidding. Otherwise, like most salads, there isn't much to the actual recipe than placing all the ingredients in a large bowl, drizzling with the dressing, and tossing until everything is well coated.

HOWEVER. As easy as any salad recipe is, there are a few tips and tricks along the way that will make this, or any, salad, the best salad of your life.

Make Dressing First. Whisk or shake in a jar together 2 tablespoons rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 2 tablespoons peanut butter, 1 tablespoon maple syrup, 1 clove of garlic grated, 2 tablespoons avocado oil, and pinch of red pepper powder if using.

If you haven't already, remove thick stems and chop 1 bunch of kale into small pieces.

Place chopped kale in large bowl. Drizzle 2 tablespoons of dressing and 1 teaspoon sea salt and "massage" the kale with your hands until the kale has broken down slightly and is glossy from the dressing, about 1 minute.

Add ¼ head green cabbage finely chopped, 2 green onions thinly sliced, ¼ cup chopped cilantro leaves, ¼ cup chopped fresh mint leaves, 2 cups shredded cooked chicken breast if using, and half the roasted peanuts.

Drizzle with dressing, and toss to combine.

Divide salad among plates. Garnish each serving with remaining chopped peanuts and shaved parmesan cheese.

Pro Tips and Techniques for Houston's Emerald Kale Salad

1. Chop the kale as small as possible. One of the reasons you don't like eating kale salad is that it's hard to eat. We're going to fix that in two ways, the first of which is chopping the kale into the smallest pieces so you don't have to unhinge your jaw like a python to get a fistful of oversized airplane tarps into your mouth. Do I exaggerate to make a point? Yes, of course. Is it kind of true though? Also of course. Chop the kale small enough that you can eat it with a spoon. I'm serious.
2. Dress and massage the kale first. The second way we're making kale salad easy to eat is by massaging the tiny chopped kale—you did chop the kale into the tiniest of tiny pieces right?— with a few tablespoons of the dressing first. I used to cringe at the idea of "massaging kale" because I don't know why, but I totally get that physically breaking down the fibers in the leaves makes kale much much easier to eat.
3. Make double the amount of Emerald Kale Salad. If you make enough Emerald Kale Salad to eat now, it will be crisp and crunchy like a salad. If you make enough to save some for later, the salad will marinate in the dressing and become ever so lightly pickled and it will be another flavor dimension.

Health and Nutrition Benefits of Houston's Kale Salad

I am not a calorie counter. And you needn't be either. I am an anti-inflammation firefighter, so this recipe focuses on:

• anti-inflammatory ingredients
• nutrient-density

The brassicas, herbs, and dressing ingredients are high in phytonutrients that fight inflammation. The crunchy roasted salted peanuts are what makes the salad craveable so that you want to eat all those good things, and both the peanuts and peanut butter in the dressing are a source of fiber and plant-based protein.

Dietary Preferences/Restrictions

• Gluten-free. The Houston's Kale Salad recipe as written is gluten-free.
• Vegan. To make the salad vegan, leave out replace the Parmesan cheese with a plant-based parmesan cheese and replace the rotisserie chicken with a can of chickpeas.

Houston's Kale Salad Variations

I could eat this Houston's Kale Salad every day exactly as is, straight out of the enormous stainless steel mixing bowl I use to mix the salad. And with a spoon, of course! And thank God we can make it at home, because we aren't about wasting more than $20 every day in the restaurant.

The original reason we made this salad at home was to use extra rotisserie chicken we had from overzealously buying at everyone's favorite bulk store, but the salad works perfectly as a starter or side salad without the chicken. If you want to change up the protein, here are some tried and true faves:

• cooked or smoked wild salmon broken up right into the salad as you're mixing the other ingredients together
• canned tuna, added the same way as above
• eggs, medium-boiled and cut into quarters. Little bits of cooked yolk will mix with the dressing and make it ever so slightly creamy.
• chickpeas, for a plant-based protein boost
• pasta, add a chickpea or other protein-power pasta and turn the salad in to a pasta salad

You can also use the Roasted Peanut Vinaigrette by itself in other ways:

• use it on the Cabbage Apple Salad and add a handful of chopped roasted salted peanuts
• Mandarin Chicken Salad
• Soba Salad
• stir the Roasted Peanut Vinaigrette into hot, cooked grains or into pasta for a lighter in texture vs heavier cream- or mayo-based pasta salad
• toss the Roasted Peanut Vinaigrette with literally any other greens.

Best Kale Salads

If you go to the trouble of washing and chopping greens for the Emerald Salad, you might as well go the distance, and prep enough to make salads for several days. You can use those greens in these chopped salads:

• Kale Salad with Sesame Miso Dressing—Hillstone dupe, which is similar to Houston's, but different, iykyk
• Kale White Bean Salad, Erewhon Dupe
• Kale Tabbouleh Salad with Cherries
• Dill Pickle Chopped Salad with Kale and Cabbage
• Kale Caesar Salad with Avocado Caesar Dressing

How to Eat More Cruciferous Vegetables, not Just Kale

• Green Shakshuka with Kale
• Eggs Florentine with Kale
• Kale Slaw with Apple Cider Dressing
• Kale Pesto

Print

Houston's Emerald Kale Salad Recipe

All the flavor and fun of Houston's Emerald Kale Salad without the fuss of having to go out!

Course Dressings, Salad

Cuisine American

Keyword hillstone, houston's, kale salad

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 10 minutes minutes

Servings 4 servings

Calories 453kcal

Ingredients

Salad

• 1 bunch green kale finely chopped
• ¼ head green cabbage finely chopped
• 2 green onions thinly sliced
• ¼ cup fresh mint leaves, chopped
• ¼ cup fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• ½ cup roasted salted peanuts chopped
• ½ cup shaved parmesan cheese
• 2 cups shredded cooked chicken breast (optional)

Roasted Peanut Vinaigrette

• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 1 lemon, juiced, about 2 tablespoons
• 2 tablespoons avocado oil
• 2 tablespoon peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup
• 1 clove garlic, grated
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• ¼ teaspoon red pepper powder

Instructions

• Combine all ingredients for dressing—2 tablespoons rice vinegar, lemon juice, 2 tablespoons avocado oil, 2 tablespoons peanut butter, 1 tablespoon maple syrup, salt, and ¼ teaspoon red pepper powder if using—by whisking in small bowl or shaking together in a small mason jar with lid. Taste with a piece of kale or cabbage and adjust seasoning to taste.
• Put the kale in a large bowl. Drizzle with ¼ cup of the dressing and a generous pinch of sea salt. Massage the chopped kale with your hands until the kale is completely coasted and slightly wilted.
• Add shredded cabbage, green onions, mint, parsley, shredded chicken if using, half the roasted salted peanuts. Drizzle with the remaining dressing and toss gently to combine.
• Divide salad among plates. Garnish each serving with remaining chopped peanuts and shaved parmesan cheese.

Notes

Store leftover dressed salad in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator for up to two days. Leftover dressed salad will take on a softer, marinated texture. Store leftover undressed prepped (i.e. washed, dried, and chopped) salad greens in the refrigerator for three days. 

Leftover Roasted Peanut Vinaigrette will keep for three days in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator.

Nutrition

Serving: 1serving | Calories: 453kcal | Protein: 36g | Fiber: 11g

Food for Afterthought

Every year around this time, something weird happens to me. It’s a strange sensation, an odd feeling on which I can’t totally put my perfectly French manicured finger.

Normally, I am a fanstasmagical fairy who gracefully juggles multiple competing priorities, but I can’t seem to focus enough to hold up one single thing. I drop stuff; I bump into walls; I forget appointments; I leave things behind and lose them; I become slightly off center. Unbalanced. A lot of people say the same things about….being in love.

oooOOOoooh. Right. Well, wrong, but that does remind me...

Then I look at the calendar and realize what time of the year it is. What time of the month it is. It’s that time, and unfortunately, we're not talking about Miller. It’s early February, which leads to the beginning of mid-February, and since February is a short month with 28 days, the middle of February is neither half of 30 days, which is the 15th nor half of 31 days, which is the cusp of the 15th and 16th, but is half of 28, which is the 14th. There is something about February 14th, the dead center of the month.

Dead.

Center.

It’s payday!

Unless, of course, you are paid bi-weekly, which is every two weeks, instead of semi-monthly which is twice a month, which never made sense to me because aren’t they the exact same effin' thing?!?!

Galentine's

What it is that I really feel is not unbalancementedness, nor is it a desire to manufacture brand new words because I have a limited vocabulary of my own; it is stress. I feel this underwhelmingly overwhelming pressure to perform, and not just perform, but perform in accordance with the standard operating procedure for Valentine’s Day. I have Valentine’s Day performance anxiety. Make royally painfully iced heart-shaped sugar cookies. Bake red velvet cupcakes. Write love letters. Make dinner. Make reservations. Take long sips of sparkling rosé and seduce you like the alarmingly charming siren that I am. In my head.

Easy. I mean, seriously. Drink sparkling rosé?

No, you see, the real performance is here. The Delicious Life. I am expected to compose a brilliantly biting, sarcastic, witty, clever, well-thought-out, thematically unified piece about how much I H-A-T-E Valentine’s Day, spew bitterness about past loves lost, about present loves absent, and future loves impossible, flood my post’s paragraphs with brilliant business analysis about how the Holiday Hell Council composed of the DeBeers, Godiva, and FTD trifecta built an outstanding marketing strategy to frighten men into wild, wasteful spending on a single day. I have to make scathing social commentary on commercialization, capitalization, and punctuation, which is all just a thinly veiled attempt at hiding how much I really just want to be romanced out of my mind…because being a bitter young maid on Valentine’s Day is more fun than a stupid silly sighing fool.

Anxious Avoidant

However, and this is a huge “however,” the pressure for high-performance Valentine’s Day writing is purely a figment of my imagination. I don’t “have to” do anything! This is a blog. It’s my blog, for fox ache. I don’t even get paid. Pressure comes from nowhere else except the tiny little editor who is sitting inside my own gorgeous head. Though I seem to think of myself as a mostly rational, logical, and completely sane person, I have very little control over this teeny tiny-but-powerful pearlescent chip embedded in my psyche that actively seeks out melodramatic, high-intensity stress. There is a stress-seeking missile in my brain that wants to explode back at “The Editor” and really, it’s all evidence that I have a massive fear of being a disappointment.

So rather than dealing with the possibility of failing at Valentine's Day, I’m going to do the mature thing. I’m going to avoid it! Instead, let me tell you about why it is absolutely certain that I will likely still have a chance to write all of that on Valentine’s Day anyway. I will be at home on Valentine’s Day instead of out with some unnamed hot suitor because for some ungodly reason, suitors who come through into my Delicious Life are real winners like one whom I shall call Mr. Awesome, not because he is awesome, but because, well, you'll see.

Reason #1 Why Sarah Will Not be Out with Mr. Awesome on Valentine's Day, or Any Other Day For That Matter

When we got into his car to drive to dinner, he asked me what kind of car I drive. For several reasons, this irritated me on the inside (but not on the outside! I still had to eat dinner!).

Does it matter what kind of car I drive? No. Is it that either 1) I don't drive a car that is good enough or 2) I don’t drive a car that is better than his? What the fuck is a “better” car anyway? Am I supposed to be impressed with his car?

Cars do not impress me, and his car was not any car that would impress me to begin with anyway. So really, he has no right to ask me anything. If he actually drove a goddamned Tesla Roadster, I would be impressed because a Tesla Roadster is an impressive car and it’s environmentally friendly. His question irritated me, my reaction irritated me even more, and I think that it was just leftover irritation from "Houston's."

I should have told him that I drive a Ferrari. But only when my driver is on vacation. Or maybe I should have told him I only take the Big Blue Bus because I don't go out much. Because I don't shower.

Reason #2 Why Sarah Will Not be Out with Mr. Awesome on Valentine's Day, or Any Other Day For That Matter

He told me an MBA is useless. Ouch. That one stung and I had to force myself to keep my lips clamped into a tight little line so that I wouldn’t start spewing out backwash-laced haterade on his precious little certification that isn’t even a degree, but a TLA (that's "three-letter-acronym" for the unvernacularized) that he can print on a homemade business card because paid a lot of money to take some tests.

Though I very often proclaim that I do not have a “list” of qualifying characteristics, education is actually on my phantom list because education is important to me. I may have been rejected from Stanfurd three times, but I’m still proud of my education, and any diss to my education is taken with a lot of offense. I know education is not synonymous with intelligence, but still, it symbolizes a commitment to something! Or something. At the same time, though, this is a hard one for me to argue because technically, I am in total agreement with his statement. An MBA is useless. However, only MBAs are allowed to make fun of their degrees. I never make fun of how utterly useless, and in fact, almost laughable, a JD is, do I?!?!

Reason #3 Why Sarah Will Not be Out with Mr. Awesome on Valentine's Day, or Any Other Day For That Matter

At the bar, he ordered a sugary sweet cocktail. It was pink. It wasn’t a Cosmo, but I swear its name was something like FruityPebbliciousMetrotini, with a Razberri Kiss. I ordered a Bourbon on the rocks and sucked it down in about 45 seconds, then ordered a second Butch-tini and took it to the table.

Lessons of the day?

Don’t stress about Valentine’s Day and don’t ever take Sarah to Houston’s and order a fucking salad.

(Incidentally, I went there for lunch recently and the food aside from the burger is unmistakably atrocious. Houston's has gone the way of Asian fusion, with a very heavy emphasis on the "ew" of fusion. Spicy tuna was rolled up with what tasted like coleslaw made with Miracle Whip. The vegetable of the day was curried cauliflower, and from about six feet away, it looked promising. When it arrived, the sadly over-steamed florets were drowning in a yellow sauce that tasted vaguely like French's mustard and garnished with the dregs from a can of Planters Mixed Nuts. I didn't even venture to try more than a bite of the Thai Steak Salad. The noodles in the bite that were in desperate need of a quick dunk in hot water to loosen them up.)

The post Kale Salad, the Best Houston's Emerald Kale Salad Dupe appeared first on The Delicious Life.

Is Yabu the best soba restaurant in Los Angeles? That would be quite a claim for a city that has more than a few soba restaurants! But in my neighborhood, Yabu is one of my favorites.

Yabu hand makes their soba noodles every day. The menu features soba, in both hot and cold preparations, as well as udon and rice. They also offer grilled and fried dishes, as well as my favorite kind of sushi, mackerel oshi the sushi.

What to Eat at the Best Soba Restaurant

We tried a little bit of everything at Yabu.

Grilled Duck and Green Onion Hot Soba

Zaru Soba, pictured at the top, is a presentation of cold soba noodles and nori seaweed served with a dipping sauce. We also tried Kamu Nanban Soba, soba noodles and grilled duck in a bowl of hot broth.

Japanese Pickles

Seaweed Sunomono

Gobo

Renkon Kinpira

Shishito Peppers

Chicken Karaage

Chicken Karaage is my all-time favorite interpretations of fried chicken. The dish is made of pieces of dark meat chicken, coated in either rice or regular wheat flour, then deep-fried. Japanese mayonnaise like kewpie, laced with either a little sriracha hot sauce or yuzu, is the best dip.

Siu Mai (Shrimp Dumplings)

Siu mai shrimp dumplings are not the traditional dumplings you get at dim sum. Yabu wraps the shrimp with thin strips of egg omelet.

Tebasaki Chicken Wing

Tsukune

Tsukune is a chicken "meatball," shaped onto a skewer and grilled. This is one of my all-time favorite dishes.

Duck and Green Onion

Negima Chicken (Dark Meat Chicken with Green Onion)

Spicy Hamachi Maki Sushi (Roll)

Mackerel Oshi Sushi

Mackerel and other silver-skinned fish are my favorite kind of fish for sushi and sashimi. Not only are these types of fish generally more sustainable, their flavor is intense and awesome.

Make Soba at Home

If you're up for the challenge of making soba at home, try the following recipes. The soba recipes use packaged soba noodles which you can buy in Asian grocery stores, some major grocery stores like Whole Foods, and online.

• Soba Noodle Salad (chilled)
• Spicy Soba Noodle Salad
• Soba Noodles with Miso Tahini Sauce
• Ginger Scallion Chicken Meatballs and Soba Noodle Soup

Yabu Restaurant
11820 W. Pico Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90064
310.473.9757
www.yaburestaurant.com

^{update: the West Hollywood location at 521 La Cienega Blvd is closed}

originally published September 2011, updated August 2022

The post Yabu Restaurant for Soba appeared first on The Delicious Life.

Don't answer that.

Between the gradual geo-shift eastward over the last few years from the wonder white westside bubble I'd been living in for the previous fifteen, my boyfriend's insistence that Asian foods must be healthier than all the pasta, pizza, buttered bread, 40-ounce steaks and pancetta-wrapped lardo we've been eating since we started dating because look at all us skinny-ass Asian people, and I suppose just boredom, we've been more frequently extending beyond our very tight radius for food. We've ventured into downtown LA a few times together: Alma when it opened, Bryan Ng's Spice Table, and The Parish for a wine event. Granted, we have not yet gone back to any of those specifically, which might be more a function of the restaurants themselves rather than downtown LA, but the subject of new, non-ethnic downtown LA dining is weighty enough to deserve its own post.

We have talked about trying any of the various ramen, shabu shabu and sushi restaurants in Little Tokyo, but not actually gone. How not-going is an achievement may not be obvious to you, but for us, merely entertaining the idea of going downtown for 90 seconds then eventually dismissing it is a big step up from previously never thinking about it in the first place because we have versions -- albeit horrible versions -- of all of that, within two miles of us.

And of course, there is Koreatown, which is closer to us, in both drive-time and taste preference. So far, we have only gone to two restaurants in Koreatown this year. One restaurant makes up 90% of our total visits to Koreatown, but like I said, this, for us, is an achievement.

The other restaurant is OB Bear, which isn't exactly a restaurant restaurant. It is the Korean version of what a non-Korean gastropub is trying to be. In other words, OB Bear actually IS a gastropub, a place not necessarily lauded for its cuisine, or for anything else for that matter. It's just a place to go to hang out and drink, that serves food on the side either 1) to comply with some sort of license to continue serving alcohol to patrons who are already sufficiently buzzed from the three other places they were drinking previously, or 2) to make sure those patrons eat something, anything, to counteract some of that alcohol before they head back out, pink and glowing, into the wild, wild Western Avenue to sing, dance or whatever. Not that I would know anything about any of that since the last time I went out out in "K-town" was 1997 which is essentially, never.

So obviously we ate dinner and drank water.

{pictured above: Kimchi Tofu. stir-fried kimchi with steamed tofu}

Leek Pancake with Spicy Dipping Sauce [$5]

Tong Dak - Small

Small fried chicken, served with pickled jalapenos, pickled radish, and a raw green cabbage salad with a disgusting Thousand Island-like mess of dressing. I forgot about Koreans' obsession with mayonnaise and Thousand Island dressing.

The post OB Bear, Koreatown {restaurant} appeared first on The Delicious Life.