If you're like me, the lettuce in your garden gets pretty dirty. While there might be soaker hoses in my future, for now pretty much everything in my garden gets watered from above and with that kind of watering, splattering of dirt occurs ... a lot. Also, since lettuce is so close to the ground, it tends to get more dirt splattered on it than other plants.
It's, well ... dirty. And there is absolutely, positively nothing worse than harvesting a big batch of lettuce from your garden only to chomp down on a mouthful of dirt and grit when eating it. Really ... I can think of nothing worse (at least not right after it happens anyway).
The Best Way to Wash Lettuce
Here's an easy solution (and the way I think is best) for washing fresh lettuce to ensure you get all of the dirt and grit off of it before it gets anywhere near your teeth.
Fill up a big bowl with cold water and plop the lettuce into the water. Be sure you have enough water to more than cover the lettuce. Swish the lettuce around a bit and let it soak for a little while. The dirt will fall to the bottom of the bowl and the lettuce should continue to float.
Then, (and this is the important part!), using your hands, LIFT the lettuce up and out of the water and place it into another container.
DO NOT POUR OUT THE WATER ON TOP OF OR WITH THE LETTUCE. (Um ... if you do, it will pour the dirt right back onto the lettuce!)
Once you remove the lettuce, you'll see all of the dirt on the bottom of the bowl. Yep, that's a lot of dirt!
And that's all there is to it.
I will admit that I usually rinse out the bowl and repeat the process a second time just to be sure I get all of the dirt. Then I put the lettuce in my salad spinner and do a final rinse & spin and then pop it in the fridge.
I rarely get grit with this washing method ... it really does work!
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