WASHING AND CLEANING GREENS

Q: My question is: what is the best way to clean, and especially dry, lettuce? Nancy

A: Short answer, Nancy: Own a salad spinner. Several ways exist, both to clean and to dry, salad greens or lettuces (or other “greens” such as leafy herbs or collard leaves), such as filling a sink with cold water and giving them a good bath, then blotting them with (or enclosing and spinning them in) kitchen towels.

But I’ve found that I get rid of the most soil (especially with from-the-field spinach) and obtain the driest leaves when I use my salad spinner, a fixture in my kitchen for years.

By the way, the worst way to wash greens is to put them in a colander (that easily can leave behind dirt in the colander) and the worst way to dry them is to air them out, splayed on paper towels (they can “perspire” their moisture and become limp).

What I do (and have found a “best practice”) is to dunk the spinner’s basket in the spinner’s shell, which itself is filled with the tap’s coldest water, swish around the leaves and drain them, repeating the process as many times as necessary until the bottom of the shell shows no more grit.

Then, I spin the leaves until the merest film of moisture remains on them and then I store them.

Storage is key, too. I line a large plastic bag with a few dry paper towels(or re-use the greens’ original plastic container, if there’s one, which also has been rinsed clean and lined with paper toweling) and keep them in the coldest bin of the refrigerator. This appears to prolong the life of the greens for many more days than simply storing them in an unlined bag or container.