How to Wash Lettuce

Posted by Amy Urquhart Jun 15, 2008

A fresh salad will be part of my Father's Day menu, so this morning I harvested the first salad of the season, made up of several lettuce greens grown from seed, including a butterhead lettuce, a romaine, some spinach leaves and even a few baby chard leaves.

One of the perks of growing lettuce from seed, especially if you grow it organically without the use of any chemicals, is that the only thing that needs to be washed from freshly harvested leaves is dirt, along with the occasional ant or earwig that comes along for the ride.

Washing lettuce is easy if you have a salad spinner, and a good quality spinner is available at most department stores for less than $20.00.

• Harvest the salad greens from your vegetable garden or community garden plot.
• Fill the basin of a salad spinner or a clean bowl with cold water.
• Add the leaves a handful at a time, swishing them around with your hand, and allowing the silt to wash off of the leaves. Don’t allow the silt to settle, or some of it will settle back onto the leaves. Keep the water moving.
• Pull the washed leaves out of the bowl of water and place them in the salad spinner basket.
• Run the spinner. Open the spinner lid, shake the leaves so that they are evenly distributed in the basket once again, and run the spinner a second time.
• Remove the leaves from the spinner and place them in a clean salad bowl.
• Pour excess water from the spinner, and rinse away any silt that may remain.
• Continue cleaning all of the salad greens in batches until they are all squeaky clean.

I'll be serving the greens tossed with my favourite salad ingredients, such as tomatoes, carrots and cucumbers, drizzled with a homemade salad dressing. I can't wait until suppertime!