Jason Prini .com

Have you ever grabbed that day-old lettuce from the fridge and find it’s all limp and dry, leaving you feeling ripped off? Well there is a quick and easy way to keep your lettuce fresh and crispy for well over a week. All you need is some paper towels {or even better a clean cotton dish towel}, and a medium sealable plastic bag.

Before you start it’s important to note that this method gets the best results with fresh lettuce, but you can use some limp day-old stuff as I did.

Time: < 5 minutes

1. Cut and Clean

Cut the leaves off the lettuce and soak them in cold water. If you have some limp leaves, let them sit in the water for around 15-20 minutes so they tighten up a bit. Before you remove them from the water, give them a gentle rub to get rid of any bugs, dirt, and chemicals.

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2. Dry

Once it’s clean, dry the lettuce off. Here I’ve used paper towels to absorb the excess water and make it easy to shake off. Lettuce spinners are even better and save paper towels. I like the OXO Salad spinner as it spins really fast and gets a lot of water out. The mechanism is also much sturdier than the crank driven ones. It will pay for itself quickly. Don’t be too worried about getting all the water out, some is good as it will keep the lettuce crisp.

3. Remove the Bad Leaves

This is how you keep your lettuce fresh for a really long time. Remove any broken, bruised and torn leaves. Tear them up and make yourself a nice salad. You can store these leaves if you’d like, but make sure to wrap them separately so you can use them first and they don’t contaminate the lot.

4. Prep for Storage

Once the lettuce is clean and dry, lay down enough paper towels to completely wrap all the lettuce. Then place the clean nearly-dry lettuce on one end of the towels. Here you can use that clean cotton dish towel in place of paper ones. This is much better option as you can clean the cotton towel and re-use for years. Just remember if you’re going to use cotton dish towel, to make sure it’s clean, and don’t use fabric softener. Here’s a tip, drying the cotton towel in the sun will kill all bacteria and break down most chemical residue.

5. Wrap it up!

Roll up the lettuce in the towel, being careful not to damage the leaves. Here’s where you find out if you left too much water in the lettuce. If the towel is soaked, you’ll need to remove some more water.

6. Bag and Store

Now take the roll and place it into a sealable plastic bag. An alternative to the bag is a plastic food container like the kind you can get for ice cream. Whatever you choose, just make sure the plastic is of high quality {food grade}. The last thing you want is carcinogens leaking into your lettuce.

Stick the bag/container into the fridge and enjoy perfect lettuce whenever you need it.