How I Keep my Lettuce Crisp

We are head lettuce enthusiasts. It’s crunchier and crisper than leaf lettuces. But if you are like me, maybe you forget or don’t have time to pick your lettuce first thing in the morning and you’re running out at whatever time you remember for a head of lettuce for dinner.

Or maybe you’re like me and you harvest it all and then forget to put it in the fridge and it stays on the countertop a bit longer than you’d publicly admit and ends up looking lifeless.

Well, I’ve suffered from all of these woes and I’ve found a few tricks for perking our lettuce back up to life.

First, of course, whenever feasible, harvest as early as you get up and into the garden. And then get that lettuce out of the sunshine and into the kitchen Either drop it into a large bag or better yet, rinse it with water and then put it into a bag or bowl and into the fridge.

I’ve been playing around with just leaving our rinsed lettuce in our salad spinner. This is a bit bulky, but I do this and then usually don’t spin it until I need it.

This seems to keep the greens in a cold, high moisture environment which keep them in pristine quality for often more than a week, though it’s only in the height of lettuce season in late spring that we need to store it for that long.

I’m also a fan of the 2 gallon plastic bags for storage once they are rinsed well. It is an alternative to locking in the moisture.

The key is to keep them in an enclosed container. I just found the head I harvested yesterday that was sitting in a shallow bowl of cold water inside the fridge completely wilted. So I’ve pulled all the leaves off and dunked them completely in cool water and put them back in the fridge.

Think of lettuce like flowers. If they don’t continue to uptake moisture, they will wilt. We want the longest vase life out of them, and for lettuce that means perky leaves and a nice crunch.

My lettuce left in the fridge in that bowl of water completely wilted overnight, so I tore it all off the stem and it’s back in the fridge rehydrating. This lettuce is not doomed, but this is also a last-ditch effort for extraordinary circumstances (that some of us may call everyday life).

After I soaked it in ice water for several hours, it went into a 2 gallon bag along with the salad spinner lettuce. I wrapped the dripping leaves with a fwe paper towels and deflated the bag. It went into our cooler and up north with us, and we enjoyed three nights of fresh salad and you’d never know the lettuce was limp and lifeless a few hours before we departed!