HEAD LETTUCE - BUTTERHEAD

Butterhead lettuce has a silky leaves that form a tight inner head. We wash them as best as we can, but you’ll likely find that you have to do some of the dirty work. Cut the core of the head out, separate the leaves, rinse or soak the leaves in cold water, and then dry them. A solid salad spinner is a key kitchen tool for a salad lover and is a sure way to make your lettuce last as long as possible.

Salads are something we eat a lot at our house, learning to be flexible with seasonal ingredients as they come around. It’s important to think about the physics of a salad. Which ingredients sink to the bottom of the bowl, and which ones are lofty and float on the surface? One tool that gets a lot of use at our house is the vegetable peeler. We use it to “peel” entire carrots, creating long, thin ribbons that lay on top of the greens without rolling to the bottom like a dense carrot coin would. Cabbage roughly cut into chunks are tough to chew in a salad, but super thin shreds are a textural addition to a leafy salad. When I was a kid, after getting our weekly groceries, my mom would pre-make a huge salad (without the dressing) and keep it in the fridge for us to eat throughout the week. A few of our members have told us that they do the same thing. Keeping some roasted veggies or some pre-cut raw veggies for adding to salads is a great way to have a quick and easy option for nourishing salads.

STORAGE: Store in a closed container or in a plastic bag in the fridge. Keeping the greens closed off from the dry air in the fridge can make them last for longer than a week.