![]() Image by Rasbak via wikimedia Is Iceberg Lettuce Really So Bad? It is the superior storage qualities, and hence the ease of shipping, which made iceberg so readily available, and hence so popular, long before other varieties were commonly found in grocery stores. Romaine will last longer than most leaf lettuces (red leaf, butterhead, curly leaf, etc.) which will wilt terribly within 4 days, at best.Ĭrisp head lettuces, of which iceberg is the most well-known, will hold up the longest and can do well on it’s own with no preparation, for a while. ![]() There are also green fabric bags you can buy to store your lettuce or other greens, which work well. Don’t fall for the mistaken instruction that the paper towels should be damp to retain moisture, as this will only hasten the demise of your lettuce. Then, store them in a bag lined wit paper towels to absorb any excess moisture, which will cause the lettuce to decompose more quickly. As hinted at in the opening paragraphs, if you cut them, a clean knife might be a good idea. Just make sure to dry them well, with paper towels or even better, in a salad spinner. Incidentally, when dealing with a whole head of green lettuce such as Romaine or a leaf lettuce variety, you can actually store your leaves longer if you go ahead and cut or tear them away from the stem, and wash or dry them, making them ready for use. This is about the myth of lettuce being damaged by cutting because I enjoy busting myths. Tear it, cut it, bash it with a hammer, use it for toilet paper, I don’t care. You can throw your salad ingredients in a blender and slurp them through a straw, for all I care. But this article isn’t about whether salads should be chopped or not, which, frankly, I could care less about. Also, you couldn’t have an iceberg wedge without a knife. This happens with Caesar salad quite a lot, which really should have nice uniform square pieces of Romaine lettuce, if you ask me, regardless of how it may have been done in the past. Many “fancy” restaurants seem to have taken this myth to heart, producing green salads that have lettuce pieces of all different sizes, making it difficult to eat. Sometimes hand torn lettuce is better but at other times, uniformly cut lettuce is nice. Romaine lettuce Torn Lettuce Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be Before we go further, keep in mind that introducing bacteria, via the blade, to the cut edges of lettuce that you intend to store for a period of time, is a different subject, but one that is more of interest to commercial bagged lettuce processors than home cooks. It really will make no difference whatsoever which method you choose, and both will turn brown at the same rate. But this isn’t true and tearing lettuce does not damage less cells than cutting the leaves with a knife. This myth seems to have been based on the belief that hand tearing will tear the lettuce along natural seams and thus damage fewer cells, limiting their exposure to oxygen, which turns them brown.
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