The Vicious Cycle of Salad Suspicion

Just in time, because 'Ho! tis the time of salads' (according to 18th century author Laurence Sterne)

Dear Tamar:

Is there a secret to making easy, delightful salads? I like eating salads, but I hate making them. I hate sticking my hands into freezing cold water to wash greens (only to sometimes still find dirt hiding in crevices.) I hate drying leaves that stubbornly stay slightly wet even after spinning them for seven minutes straight—and toppings that fall to the bottom of the bowl, and frisée that leaps from one’s fork, refusing to be eaten…What am I missing?

-Suspicious of Salads

Dear Suspicious of Salads,

I often receive letters about which I yearn to know more. Yours may have inspired the most yearning. I want to know: Do you have a spider? (Kitchen tool, not web-spinner. I’ll explain.) What vessel do you wash greens in—sink? spinner bowl? mixing bowl? What greens are you washing? What salads do you like? What do you consider a salad? Do you know how beautifully you write about your issues with salad-making?

I can’t know. So I’ll make assumptions and hope you read what seems relevant and disregard the rest.

Starting from the end: Due to how beautifully you write about salad-making, I must insist that you keep trying. No one that eloquent about water and frisée is beyond help.

Anything that is sauced with a seasoned dressing intended to simultaneously tame and awaken it is a salad. This extends to single ingredients dressed with good olive oil—provided they aren’t hot. These criteria aren’t formalized anywhere—they’re my criteria. My point is that if you expand what you consider “salad,” you can avoid much of what you dislike, and still make salads. The first cucumbers, sliced, salted, drizzled with red wine vinegar and olive oil: salad. Long-awaited asparagus, grilled until charred, then tossed with a handful of chopped parsley and more olive oil: salad. Stale pita, mixed with fresh vegetables in a date molasses dressing with sumac: salad. Long slices of carrot tossed with lime and mint; farro tossed with leftover roast sunchokes and vinaigrette; yesterday’s boiled potatoes with Tuesday’s pesto; sliced oranges with salt, olives, and onion: salad, salad, salad, salad.

If you make salads to mimic those you like at a certain restaurant, or salad chain, you may be handicapping yourself. All kinds of economics of scale exist in restaurants that don’t exist at home. To include as many ingredients or different greens or dressings as a large operation can would exhaust the most energetic operation of one. Even salads prescribed by recipe writers risk leaving you ragged. Salad recipes aren’t written with your circumstances—whatever they are—in mind. They propose an ideal situation, which is rarely the situation is in.

I recommend reading any salad recipe that comes your way and noting what about it you like. Is it that it’s kale? Or topped with savory granola? Or dressed with mustard vinaigrette? Has croutons? Notice that detail that drew you in. Then, because you have a particularly beautiful ingredient on hand—one you can’t bear to cook—or because you have leftover cooked ingredients that need eating, or because you have lettuce, or because you want a salad, mimic the single thing that drew you in, and deploy it in a way that is personally salad-y.

Here is how I deal with lettuce: the sink—not the bowl of the salad spinner—should be full of cold water. I cut heads of lettice directly into the water, which avoids a cutting board. The quantity of water will help flush dirt out of crevices. Let greens crisp in the water, then lightly move them around with a spider.

In this context, a spider is a long handled-wide-meshed sieve. They are inexpensive and last forever. My spider is the alternative to forcing my hands to endure freezing cold water when I’m not up for it.

To get lettuce dry, scoop small batches—with your spider—into a salad spinner, which should be less than half full. Give it a few spins, then remove the strainer and pour any water that’s collected in the bowl back into the sink. Lay two or three kitchen towels on your counter. After about ten good spins, remove the strainer, leaving the bowl behind, and tip the lettuce onto the waiting towels. Dispatch the collected water, and start again. Repeat this process until all the lettuce is on the towels, doing their last bit of drying on your own. Doing small batches, most of the way, takes less time and produces better results than jam-packing the spinner once, and then fighting with it.

Dear cook, it’s time to end the vicious cycle. Attend to no standards but your own. Use the sink. Invest in a spider. I think you’ll see it’s been too much getting in the way. You’ve been missing nothing.