How to clean lettuce: methods and tips

How to clean salad so that it is ready for consumption without risking contamination with the earth and other organisms?

The purchased salad bulk at the supermarket or directly from fruit seller it must be cleaned at home before being consumed. In fact, this salad, unlike the one in the bag, was only collected from the earth and consequently still has traces of earth and organisms that were present there.

The correct cleaning of the salad it is important not only for pregnant women to avoid toxoplasmosis, but for anyone, because the bacteria and germs present in it could be very harmful to everyone’s health.

So let’s see how to clean the salad correctly!

Where to start to clean the salad

The salad cleaning it is important to remove any residual soil, pesticides or other contaminants. First of all, you have to rinse the leaves under cold running water. It might be useful a support to be inserted in the sink to place the salad leaves as they are cleaned.

A grill like the JMYDecor folding rack in fact it speeds up the procedure and allows you to place the salad directly on the support surface, without it falling into the sink.

JMYDecor folding rack

Instead, to clean smaller portions of salad and still prevent them from falling into the sink, you can use a angular support netwhere to store the leaves once washed and continue to use the water to clean them further.

Sink Strainer Bag it is a net that serves just this, to be placed in the corner of the sink under the jet of water which is filtered keeping the salad inside.

Disinfect the salad

Once the salad is rinsed it is important disinfect itobviously in the event that this was purchased in a fruit and vegetable shop (therefore not those in bags, already washed and ready for consumption).

In fact, the lettuce purchased from the farmer or in bulk could contain dirt, pesticides or other contaminants, which only water cannot eliminate. For this reason you need to disinfect it.

Il natural method more effective is to leave them to soak in a bowl of water and white vinegar or lemon juice for 10-15 minutes. Alternatively there are several commercial disinfectants to use, such as the classic one Chinese people.

Amuchina Disinfectant Solution

After the shutter speed has elapsed, you have to rinse the salad again with running cold water.

Dry the washed salad

Once the salad is washed, it needs to be dry it, before proceeding with the dressing. Since paper towels alone may not be enough (and come off in small pieces), the best tool for drying salad is the salad spinner.

Indeed, the salad spinner allows you to make a crispy salad without excess water. It works like this: you rotate the salad in a bowl at a high speed so that the water can separate from the salad leaves using a hand crank. After a few seconds of rotation, there will be no more water on the salad leaves and you can remove it directly using the centrifuge basket.

Newaner is a classic example of manual salad spinnerwith crank, basket that can be used as a colander and transparent plastic bowl to be used as a large salad bowl.

Newaner Salad Spinner

However, there are also models of electric salad spinners, even easier to use, because they are completely automatic. You don’t need to turn a crank but press a key.

The centrifuge E-Greetshopping it is one of these, it is wireless, recharges via USB and allows 100 washes with one charge.

centrifuge E-Greetshopping

Finally, the pressure salad spinner combines the two previous types into one: in practice it is a centrifuge model in which a lever is pushed to perform a complete rotation and wash the salad.

An example is the centrifuga LEBENLANG which with an innovative pressure mechanism cleans and dries the salad by pushing the insert on the lid.

LEBENLANG Salad Spinner