How to Use Your Lettuce Spinner to Make the Best Salads
I have long argued that if you really want to show off, you should learn how to make the perfect green salad. For a dish so often overlooked, a simple pile of greens topped with vinaigrette is deceptively time consuming, and not for the reasons you might think. Before you can even think about dressings, toppings, and garnishes, you need to get your greens sorted out.
Baking the salad is the most important part of the salad preparation that you are likely to miss. Restaurants that take salads seriously start with ice water. You first soak the herbs in an ice bath, then strain them, then dry them, usually on clean towels. (When the towels get wet, you change them to dry ones. It’s a whole process.) This painstaking process serves two very important purposes: soaking in ice water revives the greens, making them crispier and juicier, and gentle drying ensures that the bandage actually sticks to the each sheet (and will not blur). All of this works, just for the base of the salad, which has a few other ingredients to make.
The good news is that you, the home cook, don’t have to do all that to make a green salad worthy of any trendy restaurant. You just need some ice and your trusty salad bowl. Here’s how to get started.
How to make a restaurant-quality salad with a salad bowl
Remove the insert from the salad bowl and put some ice into the bowl. The exact amount doesn’t really matter; aim somewhere between a few cubes and a full tray. Then add the greens, large pieces of fresh herbs, and thinly sliced vegetables (such as onions, radishes, carrots, celery, and peas) to the basket. Put it back in the bowl over ice and add cold water to cover. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes, then take the basket out of the bowl, pour in the ice water and dry the entire shebang well. Voila: you now have a perfectly crispy plate of herbs and vegetables, completely dry and ready to garnish.
In addition to making the best salad, using your salad bowl this way makes it much easier and faster to prepare. It’s also a great way to get more use out of bulky, seemingly disposable kitchen utensils. (After I mastered the ice bath technique, I started using a salad bowl for the first time in years.) Ultimately, I think you’ll find that a little tweaking to your usual salad preparation is all it takes to eat more salad. . , point — and that’s always good.