Comments on: Skittish About Salad

By: Tonia

Tonia — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:42:10 +0000

I hate wet salad. And, I am hear to say, gasp, that I often do not wash my greens. Think about it peeps, do you really think running your vegetable under cold water is going to wash off bacteria, pesticides, chemicals? Nope. All that said, I only by extremely high quality and organic greens if they can be found during winter. Mostly I just wait until summer for my own garden. And yes those I RINSE because they are dirty with dirt. Salad items in the winter are just gross, for real. Thanks Professor for the nice post. I too like my crudites blanched…. crunchy green beans with a creamy basil dip. Yum.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:17:45 +0000

No, no. The dirty leaves are not good for you and I hope for your sake you are joking, Elyse. E coli has been found on pre bagged and “washed” ready to eat salad greens. People have gotten sick and died. I don’t care how well you know your farmer- wash your greens.

I’m not a huge fan of single function kitchen implements but a salad spinner is a great one.

By: Elyse

Elyse — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:52:53 +0000

I just eat the dirty leaves. It’s good for you.

By: jess

jess — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:03:36 +0000

I have to second the salad spinner. I love mine.

By: Jean Patiky

Jean Patiky — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 03:44:29 +0000

I LOVED THIS POST!!! Found it funny, well-researched and almost convincing….boy can that kid write!!!

By: Otis

Otis — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:54:16 +0000

I once spent a day following the workers at Green Gulch Farm in Marin County. We picked greens and potatoes and washed them in so many changes of water you could not find the remotest speck of dirt. It was a devotional experience for these Zen folk.

Profusser, those are the same perfect salad greens you are washing all over again. If you get them from a good source there is absolutely no need. None whatsoever. Stop this now.

By: Sarah M.

Sarah M. — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:49:57 +0000

WTF? So I’ve been forcing myself to eat spinach salads all this time for NOTHING?

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:27:22 +0000

“Meticulously drying each of the leaves”

Surely you jest. That’s what a salad spinner is for. I dump my greens from the salad spinner onto a cloth towel. While I am cooking the rest our dinner, they air dry. By the time dinner has been eaten, they are perfectly dry and ready to be tossed with a little dressing. We eat our salad at the end of the meal as some Europeans do. It’s thought to aid in digestion. For us it’s just organic salad greens dressed lightly in a homemade vinaigrette.

If I am making a more complicated salad with greens and cheese and nuts or meat, we might eat it as a main meal or before the meal with the rest of the meal being small.

Jeffrey Steingarten’s (have that book, by the way) argument may hold true spinach (and for more on the argument on raw vs. cooked vegetables see here http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=raw-veggies-are-healthier&page=2 but I rarely use spinach as a salad green. It’s heavy and bitter raw. I like my salads to be light and palate cleansing.

By: Mr. Sunshine

Mr. Sunshine — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:00:55 +0000

Local, organically grown mache, frisee, arugula, tsatsoi? These should be avoided, or cooked? Wow, Mr. Fussy, you’re really “out there” on this one!