When I was young, my mother told me to never use a knife to chop salad greens. "They'll turn brown," she said. "Always tear them with your hands." To this day, I have never been able to prove this wrong or right; I usually make salads and eat them on the same day so they don't have a chance to turn brown. I also often do use a knife now, especially when chopping romaine or another crunchier lettuce. What about you? How do you chop up your salad greens?
And now, just in case you're craving a green salad after all that, here's a great roundup of some of our best spring salads.
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(Image: Faith Durand from this recipe for Green Salad with Walnut Oil, Celery, and Radishes)
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Comments (19)
I chop with a knife if I'm the only one eating, otherwise rip with hands.
Also, the reason why you should tear instead of cut is in a Good Eats episode from a while back: if you cut, you're rupturing the leaves' cell walls. Tearing keeps them intact.
Talking to a friend in the restaurant business I have learned the simple trick to avoiding browned greens: CUT YOUR LETTUCES WITH A PLASTIC KNIFE.
I'm not sure of the chemistry behind this...perhaps the absence of metal surfaces on greens prevents such rapid oxidation? All I know is that it works!
I always chop them with a knife and I keep them on my fridge for a week or so, and they have never turned brown (well..maybe after a week and half they do look some brownish) and they are still crisp
I cut the root end off with a knife and after a week, the cut end with be tannish brown. If I am going to eat it pronto, I will do a chopped salad. If it's going to be some time, I tear it apart with my hands.
My mom told me this also and it seems to be true for iceberg but not romaine.
I've been using scissors to harvest and cut the lettuce right before eating it.
Whichever is easiest. Usually by the time the greens turn brown they're old enough that visual aesthetics are not their biggest problem. ;)
as mentioned above, a plastic knife is also what I use.
Depends on the kind of green and when they'll be served. If I'm making a salad that will be on the table in a few minutes, I use my hands. If I'm cutting up a whole head of lettuce while packing lunches, I'll probably use a knife because I'm lazy.
I do ALL of the above---depending on time and my mood. But let me ask this question: what is an appropriate size for a "prepared" bite of salad green? My mother told me nothing larger than a fifty-cent piece, but I get salad greens all the time in restaurants that I have to cut with my knife just so I can get them in my mouth.
This annoys me greatly because I was also taught that it was impolite (and insulting to the host) to cut up one's salad (don't ask me---ask Emily Post).
P.S. And do you break the stems off of raw spinach? I do, but I seem to be the only one.
I was taught that salad should not be cut with a knife as part of my table manners too.
Apparently it goes back to the days when people ate with silver cutlery, the acids in the lettuce oxidized the host's silverware.
@SunnyBlue,
I'm for small pieces of lettuce too. If it doesn't fit in your mouth, it's not small enough. After listening to a David Sedaris piece (or perhaps David Lebovitz) on the radio, I discovered that the polite way to deal with large pieces of salad is to use one's knife to fold them over and re-fork them.
And I do break stems off of raw spinach, and any salad green with a distinctly tougher stem.
I can't stand having to deal with large pieces of lettuce and dressing flinging all over the place. I pretty much only eat chopped salads.
Salad that isn't chopped up small is horrendous. I hate the way it looks when you have to stuff things in your mouth.
BTW - when dressing the salad, you should toss it for 5 minutes. My friend who worked as an au pair in France was told that, and I used to think it was obsessive, but try it. You'll have perfectly dressed salad!
And I always tear salad leaves.
i really want one of those salad shredder scissors! but i've a feeling it'll just sit in my drawer like all the other fancy tools i get.
I found that if I rip the lettuce into pieces with my hands, the pieces stay fresh longer and do not brown as fast as when I cut it with a knife. The knive and the cutting board seem to shorten the life span of the lettuce.
I do whatever's convenient depending on the lettuce but how does anyone manage to core iceberg lettuce without a knife or with a plastic knife?
I'm pretty sure I remember from On Food and Cooking that there is a slight difference in edge browning between cut vs. torn lettuce. As I recall, the difference is because cutting the lettuce with a knife breaks open all the cell walls in the path of the knife, whereas tearing pulls the cells apart from each other without breaking the cell walls themselves. Maybe that would explain why a serrated plastic knife leads to less browning—it's essentially a tearing, rather than slicing, device.
On the other hand, I could swear that I read something McGee wrote that said that growing in wind makes asparagus toughen by promoting lignin production, but I can't find proof anywhere. So don't take my word for it.
Depends on how much salad I'm making.
If it's just me, I'll rip with my hands; if it's for four or more people, I get out the knife to speed things up.