Slow Cooker Creamy Kale With Fontina and Bread Crumbs

Name: Slow Cooker Creamy Kale With Fontina and Bread Crumbs
Total time: 4 h
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients: 3 to 3½ pounds kale (3 to 5 large bunches), stemmed and leaves roughly chopped or torn into bite-size pieces; 3/4 cup olive oil; 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for seasoning; 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, preferably aged; 3 tablespoons unsalted butter; 1 cup panko-style bread crumbs; Black pepper, for seasoning; Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon; 8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature; 8 ounces fontina, grated (about 2 heaping cups)

By Sarah DiGregorio

Total Time: 3 to 4 hours
Rating: 4(411)
Notes: Read community notes

This recipe, made in a slow cooker or on the stovetop, is a rich, satisfying way to eat hearty winter greens, a dish especially suited to a holiday table. Crunchy, lemony panko lends a crucial counterpoint to the creamy braised kale. Use any variety of kale you like, though collards or mustard greens would also work well. Fontina melts beautifully and is a flavorful but relatively mild cheese, making it ideal here. The cream cheese adds tang while stabilizing the fontina and keeping it creamy even as it sits on the table for a long meal.

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Ingredients

Yield:8 servings

3to 3½ pounds kale (3 to 5 large bunches), stemmed and leaves roughly chopped or torn into bite-size pieces
¾cup olive oil
1teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for seasoning
1tablespoon balsamic vinegar, preferably aged
3tablespoons unsalted butter
1cup panko-style bread crumbs
Black pepper, for seasoning
Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
8ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
8ounces fontina, grated (about 2 heaping cups)

Ingredient Substitution Guide

Preparation

Slow Cooker Method
1. Step 1
  Add the kale to a 6- to 8-quart slow cooker in 3 batches: Season each batch with about a third of the olive oil, salt and vinegar, and vigorously massage into the kale with your hands. This will soften and tenderize the kale, causing it to shrink and fit in the slow cooker. Cook the kale until it's very tender, 3 to 4 hours on low, stirring once or twice to ensure even cooking. (The greens will hold well on warm for up to 2 more hours.)
2. Step 2
  Meanwhile, make the bread crumbs: Melt the butter in a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add the panko, season with a pinch of salt and more generously with pepper, and cook, stirring constantly, until the bread crumbs are a deep golden-brown, about 3 minutes. Stir in the lemon zest and remove from the heat.
3. Step 3
  Using a spoon, break up the cream cheese, and drop the pieces into the slow cooker with the kale. (The slow cooker should be on low or warm.) Stir well until the cream cheese has melted into the kale. Add the fontina and the lemon juice, stir, then cover the slow cooker and let the cheese melt, about 1 minute. Stir to evenly combine. Scoop the kale mixture out onto a shallow serving bowl or plate. Evenly spoon the bread crumbs on top to serve.
Stovetop Method
1. Step 4
  Add the kale to a large Dutch oven in 3 batches: Season each batch with about a third of the olive oil, salt and vinegar, and vigorously massage them into the kale with your hands. This will soften and tenderize the kale, causing it to shrink and allowing it to easily fit into the pot. Cover the pot and cook on low to medium-low, stirring every 10 minutes, until the kale is very tender, about 30 minutes. Adjust the heat to low if you feel the kale is browning or sizzling rather than gently braising.
2. Step 5
  Meanwhile, make the bread crumbs: Melt the butter in a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add the panko, season with a pinch of salt and more generously with pepper, and cook, stirring constantly, until the bread crumbs are a deep golden-brown, about 3 minutes. Stir in the lemon zest and remove from the heat.
3. Step 6
  Using a spoon, break up the cream cheese, and drop the pieces into the slow cooker with the kale, over low heat. Stir until the cream cheese has melted into the kale. Add the fontina and the lemon juice, stir, then cover the pot and let the cheese melt, about 1 minute. Stir to evenly combine. Scoop the kale mixture out onto a shallow serving bowl or plate. Evenly spoon the bread crumbs over the top to serve.

Ratings

4 out of 5

411 user ratings

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Private Notes

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Cooking Notes

Mimilinda5 years ago

No kale but savoy cabbage sliced in 1 cm ribbons. Fried some garlic, shallots & cubed organic bacon in olive oil. Added the cabbage bit by bit with more olive oil. Fried the lot 10 min max. Then added the cream cheese, salt, pepper, some nutmeg. Put it all in a pyrex dish & grated the fontina on top. Put it in the oven 15 mins - perfect! Oh, by the way I forgot the breadcrumbs, but didn‘t really miss them (it‘s rich enough as is...). All in all much faster & absolutely delicious!

Janet5 years ago

Step 3 in the "stovetop method" refers to the slow cooker when adding the cheeses. Should we assume that you mean the Dutch oven?

Clark5 years ago

How about an instant pot variation?

Gale5 years ago

Entire portion is 1400. Who can eat the entire Dish? Portion control always.

Jamie4 years ago

Followed directions exactly, cooked on low for three hours (stirred a few times in that last hour to make sure nothing got too crispy). I think if you overcook the kale this could easily be a fail--and you MUST remove woody stems. Everyone enjoyed it, including the non-kale eaters. Will make as a green side for Thanksgiving. If making in advance, I would cook the kale per instructions, hold it in the fridge, then rewarm on low before adding cheese and breadcrumbs.

Marilyn Biery4 years ago

This is the first recipe on this site that I truly disliked. Should have read the notes (I usually do) but it sounded like a good way to cook kale. My husband gamely ate it....I couldn't handle more than a bite or two, and that mostly the krunchy topping. I'll stick to spinach from now on.

Deb W.4 years ago

This sounds like a totally different recipe.

Cara3 months ago

I guess YMMV on the lemon. I used 4 heads of lacinato/Tuscan kale, and I kept thinking that this seems like a sh*t ton of lemon zest and juice for what that cooks down to. Turns out, yes, it was really heavy on the lemon. We kinda lost the creamy, cheesey flavor to the lemon. So maybe add it in waves and taste as you go.. Also if not serving immediately, don't add the cheese. Add that at the very last minute because it won't keep it's texture for very long.

janis1 year ago

This is mac and cheese with kale substituting for the noodle. Delicious and just as comforting.

Adrienne1 year ago

This is a great recipe to make for Thanksgiving. It isn’t especially flavorful, but your great aunt Mildred who thinks that black pepper is spicy will love it.

susan1 year ago

Farmers market bunch was 7 oz of Lacinato kale so I scaled back quite a bit. 2oz each cream cheese and Fontina. One oz each would have been fine. Cooked on stovetop. Yummy, the cheeses made it super yummy but a bit over the top.

Hamv2 years ago

This recipe is fantastic. We needed to cook the kale a bit more than suggested. Since our instapot doubles as a slow cooker we just did an additional 15minute pressure cook to get it there. A few extra hours in the slow cooker would probably work as well.

Jennifer M2 years ago

Hi! I’m in the middle of cooking this recipe but I don’t see where it says to add balsamic vinegar which is listed in the ingredients. Am I missing something?

Greg2 years ago

This turned out great! I used Guoda rather than fontina cheese and also added a Polska Kielbasa from Trader Joe's at the bottom of the slow cooker, which added some additional flavoring to the kale. I also added a dash of nutmeg, as suggested here.

KLW3 years ago

On this scorching Summer day, I turned to the slow cooker. I tried this recipe with half baby spinach, half baby arugula and pecorino instead of fontina. Cooked it for 3 hours on low...was delicious! I was especially grateful to find a use for all my greens before leaving for summer vacation, and to do it without heating up the kitchen.

Dani3 years ago

I got three 1-lb bags of cut/pre-washed kale. I think it was too much. I will play around with the recipe again, with much less kale. May need to lessen the amount panko, too, though. On another note, the raw, massaged kale with olive oil, balsamic, and salt was delicious.

Chelsea md4 years ago

So great! i have been making it all the time and will eat it over rice!

Les O4 years ago

Made this for the second time after a while. Cut down on the fontina by a 1/3 even even though we all love cheese. The result was MUCH more sharp and flavorful, and a lot less rich and heavy (and I love rich, heavy, cheesy dishes). Same amount of lemony, peppery breadcrumbs kept it a win. Will do it this way from now on, with less fontina.

Miya4 years ago

Grigsby didn't like! I think it was the lemon.

Sarah4 years ago

This sounds delicious. I might add a scratch of grated nutmeg.

Deb W.4 years ago

Can I substitute collard greens, or maybe fresh spinach in this recipe?

Diana S4 years ago

I thought this was great! I made it for family thanksgiving before reading the comments that it was “inedible,” so I arrived to Thanksgiving giving everyone fair warning. It was delicious! And I don’t even like Kale! Maybe the people who didn’t like it added to much salt when massaging the kale? The cheese adds so much salt so I literally did barely a sprinkle (and I used kosher salt). I also didn’t measure the olive oil, balsamic, or salt, just guessed based on what the recipe recommended.

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