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I think the thing boils down to how much you need to get from the lettuce. If you demand the best of the best performance for your salad, you want to blot it dry with paper towels, so that the texture is best preserved and the appearance is undisturbed. For my purpose, in my kitchen, a salad spinner saves money (the paper towels), time (MY TIME), and allows ...

Tearing is NOT worth the extra effort, tested experimentally. Others have explored the theoretical reasons behind this, so I decided to test it in real life. I did this like so: Green leaf lettuce from the local CSA Cut one leaf with a sharp knife (stainless), and tore the second leaf carefully by hand (fast, clean tears) Pieces were both wrapped in ...

It depends on what type of lettuce it is -- part of the issue is that if the lettuce is touching plastic, it will rot quicker, so I wrap it in paper towels, then bag it (but not sealed), and keep it in my crisper. For whole heads of lettuce (iceburg, butter, red leaf, etc), I just wrap the whole thing in dry paper towels, then shove it back into the bag ...

For Iceberg lettuce I usually core it first (smash it stem end down on the counter and the core will pull right out) and then turn over under a stream of cool water and let the water run into the head. Turn it core side down and let it drain in a colander or the sink before you then break up/tear apart. For Leaf lettuce, break the leaves apart and place in ...

Harold McGee discusses this in On Food And Cooking. From the Preparing Salads section on page 318: If the leaves need to be be divided into smaller pieces, this should be done with the least possible physical pressure, which can crush cells and initiate the development of off-flavours and darkened patches. Cutting with a sharp knife is generally the ...

Wilting in greens is triggered by temperature, pH, and salt content. To reduce wilting, you can cool the vegetables or shrimp, make the vegetables more acidic*, or decrease their salt content. My suggestion would be to cool the shrimp with an ice water bath or cold running water. This is the most traditional approach for shrimp salad. Alternately, you ...

Tearing lettuce is worth the effort It takes a reasonably similar amount of time as cutting, and a different but comparable amount of work. If you are planning on eating the salad soon, all the above comments apply as to the browning effect. However, browning isn't the only consideration when deciding between cutting and tearing. Texture is as essential ...

The best way to remove the aphids is to submerge the vegetables in cold water for at least 10 minutes. Then drain, rinse them off, and dry them. Salad spinners are perfect for this. Once the aphids have been drowned and rinsed off, the greens are perfectly safe to eat. Actually, it should be safe to eat the aphids as well, it's just unappetizing.

While it might be too tough and bitter to eat as a raw salad, you might try it as a warm wilted lettuce salad with a sweet and sour dressing (bacon, bacon grease, onions, cider vinegar, sugar) to help mask bitterness. Alternatively you might also try a Lettuce and Pea Soup: Sweat onions in butter, season with salt and pepper. Add lettuce and wilt down. ...

The browning of Lettuce leaves are due to the reaction of polyphenol(a chemical in any fruit or vegetable) and enzymes. This is due to two main causes: Aging Cell damage (i.e. from cutting, tearing) Every cell has separate chambers for these two, if they somehow leak, and get mixed up, this would cause browning. Cutting and tearing cause damage to the ...

In my experience lettuce will brown faster if cut instead of torn. However as most people are consuming the lettuce within the day, cutting won't make much of a difference if you plan on serving within the hour. It will generally show up the next morning. Iceberg and Romaine are the two lettuce types that come to mind as being nasty for browning. Also ...

Usually sellers hold the lettuce at room temperature during the hours of sale (to show to buyers) and place them in the refrigerator in the night. But attention. The supermarkets assemble the heads under plastic films (as said), which retain moisture, and daily keep them anyway in departments "fresh." The small vendors display the salads without protection, ...

It is all due to storage lifetime. Lettuce is particularly perishable, compared to many other vegetables. You will get a considerably longer storage lifetime if it is refrigerated, rather than kept at room temperature. According to the USDA: Storage Conditions: Lettuce should be quickly cooled and maintained as close to 0 °C (32 °F) as possible ...

I expect that the ultimate answer to your question is to eat your lettuce faster and restock sooner. I fear getting more than a week of "freshness" out of your lettuce may be expecting too much. Since you are storing it in a water bath, you can get an extra couple of days out of raising the acidity of your bath a bit. Try adding a little bit of lemon juice ...

Bolted lettuce tastes bitter; I'd suggest putting it in your compost pile if you have one. Of course, if you like bitter greens, you could make a salad of your lettuce (perhaps with a mix of other greens) with some dried fruit, toasted nuts, and a little goat cheese; the flavors might marry well.

A reason, I don't do it is that I usually store the leaves in the fridge and eat them over a period of a week and more. For that, I don't want them to be damaged mechanically, as even very small fractures rot a lot easier (as I also wrote in this post of mine). Since I'm way too lazy to blot it dry with paper towels, I just (very) carefully shake the water ...

Remember to never cut lettuce with a metal knife. It will oxidize the lettuce and possibly create that bitterness. They sell plastic lettuce knives, but I used to work in the produce dept of a grocery store and our favorite lettuce knife was to get a plastic cake cutter (cheap/free) from the bakery dept.

I think the biggest issue, what they're warning you against when they say not to cut, has to do with removing leaves if you're using less than a whole lettuce. If you slice up the lettuce head as though it was an eggplant, you will leave behind a flat plane of cut lettuce walls which will be nasty and brown the next time you make a salad. If you pull off ...

Besides BobMcGee's answer, which is quite thorough, one option would be to avoid using lettuce in your salad. For example, you could make a salad of wild rice, and sauteed asparagus and mushrooms. Placing hot shrimps on top won't wilt anything, and you can garnish with sprigs of parsley or other herbs that will remain nice and crisp because they don't have a ...

I have just found the transcript of a Good Eats episode about lettuce storage. It's close to Joe's answer but they say the lettuce should be kept in an air tight bag with air sucked out. In short they say: washed heads kept intact for delicate lettuce, cut is ok if hearty heads spinned dry wrapped in paper towel stored in air tight bag with the air ...