Salad Recipes Six Tips For Preparing Your Salad

Salad Recipes

 

Now I know that many if not most of you reading this post have been making salad recipes for years and years. I get it! I know that for most of us preparing a salad recipe for lunch or dinner is task that for the most part is done by rote. There are those of us though that have never been into cooking or making our own meals and we have gotten by on the seats of our pants. This blog post is more a quick tutorial on the correct or in my humble opinion the best way to prepare a salad for our consumption. When you are planning on preparing a salad there are some things to keep in mind when making your choices for the greens you will use to create the salad that you are seeing in your minds eye.

The most important of the tips for preparing your best salad recipe is of course to find and use the freshest, youngest salad greens that you can find. Why? Because the younger salad greens are more tender and possess the most delicate flavors over older salad greens. "Older" salad greens are what is known as "overgrown greens" in the culinary world and they are generally are more fibrous and can even be a bit rubbery in texture.

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Now, on this tip there is quite some debate amongst people I know and I have gone back and forth with this one. Here it is: Some people say to slice your salad greens and some people say to tear your salad greens. In my humble opinion either technique will work just fine. The difference is all in the presentation of the salad recipe you want to make. If you slice your salad greens or cut them with a steel knife then you can expect them to brown because of the contact a metal molecule to the salad greens. I am sure you have seen this happen with regular head lettuce. Now, on the other hand some people feel it is better to slice the greens because tearing the greens means that you have to hold those greens in a tight grip in order to tear them. Well this might be true but, the fact of the matter is that baby salad greens are so small that they don't need to be torn and for the most part do not need to be sliced in many cases. If you want to slice salad greens safely without the greens "browning" then use a knife like a Kyocera Ceramic Knife or a Plastic Salad Knife. Both of these knives will not "brown" your salad greens.

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The next tip to address is the cleaning of your salad greens. I know what you are thinking. "I have been washing my salad greens under running water for years!" I did it that way to! I don't anymore! It is much better to take your salad greens and soak them in some ice cold water in a big bowl for a few minutes and this will bring back some of the crispness that may have been lost in shipping unless you are lucky enough to have purchased your greens from a local farmers market. The soaking will also return a certain amount of moisture that was lost in the shipping process as well! When I am soaking the greens I will also gently move the greens around a bit so that any dirt down toward the bottom of the greens will fall away and go to the bottom of the bowl.

Another tip I can share with you is that in my bad old days I used to take the greens out of the water and place them on a clean towel or clean paper towels and pat them dry. That was the way I was taught when I was a kid. That was the way lots of us were taught when we were taught! Then all of a sudden enter the Salad Spinner! The Salad Spinner is one of the greatest inventions for the professional kitchen and gourmet home kitchen alike! The Salad Spinner uses centrifugal force to gently remove the excess water from your salad greens and make sure that they are perfectly dried and ready for use. There are times where you may dry your salad greens using the old towel method and if the leaves are not dried just right there is a chance that your salad dressing of choice may not "stick" to excessively wet greens!

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Last but not least when you are done using the Salad Spinner and you need to store your salad greens for a short amount of time I use a bowl or some kind of container and I line that container with some dry paper towels and I put my greens in the container and then I put some dry paper towels over the top of the greens in the container. I do not use an airtight lid on the container and I do not use plastic wrap of any kind on the top of the container because salad greens need to breathe. Well there you have it my six tips on how to prepare salad greens for making your best salad recipes every time!