This morning, washing and cutting lettuce for one of the side dishes of tonight's dinner, it hit me in wondering, does anyone else use this method for drying their just washed lettuce?
Being that it's a "slight pain" the prep of washing the veggies, lettuce needs to be bone dry when using a thick dressing on it like blue cheese or even honey mustard dressing - because if the lettuce has remaining water drops on it, it never fails that the dressing put on it will become "soupy" when it's served.
I use to pat it dry, each leaf, and that's very time consuming, and I really don't like doing that. I thought there HAD to be a better way to remove the water after washing the lettuce.
So, two factors came into play. I always put my cleaned cut up lettuce in a baggie in the frig until it's time to serve it on salad plates. I keep all the other salad veggie ingredients separately wrapped until I'm putting each salad together just before serving.
Well, one day, I just threw in a couple of paper towels with the cut up lettuce into that baggie, and the paper towels sucked up all that extra moisture that would have "souped out" my dressings.
Now what I do with lettuce I'm using for salad is:
I wash the lettuce, cut it up, throw it in a baggie with a paper towel or two,
and then blow some air into that baggie to fill it up, tape the end or use a twisty tie, then I shake it up! The more you shake, the drier the lettuce becomes, and it works perfectly.
Blowing up the baggie allows all the pieces of lettuce to come in contact with the paper towels to dry each cut up piece. You'll know they are all dry when the baggie itself hasn't any droplets of water remaining on it. Then just keep that in the frig until you're going to use it, removing the wet paper towels. I use them on the counter afterwards, as they're clean and only wet, to clean up the mess.
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I carefully wash the lettuce leaves, spread them out on a clean dry tea towel then gently roll up the towel lengthways. Holding both ends of the towel firmly I swing it around for a minute, the towel absorbing most of the moisture. Then I change the lettuce over onto another dry towel, loosely roll it up and put it into the fridge crisper. It will keep for well over a week. My mom always did this and I guess it could be called the original salad spinner. LOL
I do have a salad spinner which works great. But this idea is a excellent one too. :)
I used to work in a restaurant making salads. There is a wonderful invention called a salad spinner. You put your salad greens or lettuce in, turn the handle, and the water spins out like a washing machine spinning clothing.
While I think the theory and outcome of the blowing-,in-the-bag lettuce drying method is AWESOME, I have one problem with it. If you're talking about blowing air into the bag with your mouth, isn't that kind of gross?! I myself wouldn't want salad that someone blew on.
I really should have said "just open the bag" and clamp it closed fast, as that gets air into the baggie also.
I'm not sure how to explain it, but if you just hold the one end of a baggie, where it's like "tipped" and move it to the left or to the right, it will instantly fill with air, and that's when you just pinch off the top. Then shake it up with the paper towels in it.
I totally agree, I'd not want to eat any lettuce someone else blew their breath or germs all over either.
I have blown air into the baggie for just myself - but believe me, I totally understand that's only for personal salads, haha
It's not actually the "air that's used for drying the cut up lettuce leaves", the blown up baggie is only for one purpose, to open up the baggie to it's maximum size and allow the lettuce pieces to move around when it's shaken, that way the cut up lettuce touch the paper towels all over the inside when it's shaken.
Please see the second picture of the "blown up baggie" with the paper towels.
I know the first picture is a collapsed baggie, but when air is put into the baggie, then it's like a balloon with paper towels in it, and the lettuce can shake around very easily when the "balloon/baggie"
Like shaking a blown up baggie with popcorn in it, is how it seems when you shake it, which that dries all the lettuce.
One other reply here was about the "Salad Spinner'. Yes, and thank you, that's a great invention too. The only reason I don't use the Salad Spinner, well, there's actually two reasons.
I just don't have room for more gadgets in the kitchen, and the other is the baggie method for drying lettuce kills two problems at once. I just remove the damp or wet paper towels after I've shaken up the baggie with the lettuce in it, and then I simply put the baggie filled with lettuce into the frig, which fits easily every time (instead of trying to find a spot in the frig for another bowl).
That way, there's no extra bowl to find a spot in the frig for, there's no bowl to wash later, and the baggie with the paper towel
dried the lettuce.
Now, if I were serving salad to anyone other than myself and my husband, I'd then put everything into a nice bowl, but for just daily
"home salads" that I fix 4-5x a week, this works fast and simple.
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