Sometimes it seems like salads made in restaurants are just so much better than the ones made at home.
But if you have tried your best to recreate your favourite salad order and find that your own is still falling short, it might be because of limp or bruised lettuce.
To have deliciously crisp, cold lettuce, you need to store it properly before dressing it.
Taking to her TikTok page @emma_mavilla where she regularly posts recipe ideas, Emma shares a nifty hack for storing lettuce.
She captioned the video: “Store your lettuce this way and it will last, staying crisp and fresh for three weeks.”
Emma starts by chopping the lettuce and washing it before using a salad spinner to drain all the water.
It’s important to chop them up to avoid bruising the leaves when trying to squeeze them into the container.
She then grabs a large plastic container and places two folded paper towels down at the bottom before adding two handfuls of lettuce
Emma then placed another pair of paper towels on top and repeated the process until the container was full.
Although Emma demonstrated this hack with romaine lettuce, you can still use the method described above for your bagged loose salad leaves too.
Yes, usually those mixed greens have already been washed, but it’s the residual moisture from washing and then draining the greens, along with adequate airflow, that helps keep them crisp and fresh.
Taking to the comments section, one user asked how long the lettuce should be soaked in water.
Emma replied: “You chop, rinse, spin, drain, spin again and it’s done.”
Other users were big fans of this storage method. @megdoyon said: “Salad spinner in the sink. Genius.” @neonpuplover wrote: “This is genius.”
@mypursuitofachievinga commented: “This is such a good idea. Thanks for sharing. @michellyb75 urged: “Dry really well, to this most definitely doesn’t work well.”
