Making Salads at Home

Any hacks to making salads at home more convenient?

Started making salads at home again and it takes a lot of work and a lot of time. Especially compared to dropping into stores and picking up ready made salads.

Let’s say go to grocery store or market and pick five or six ingredients like lettuce and small Japanese cucumber and cherry tomatoes and onions and red and yellow peppers and black olives and feta cheese that comes in a block and then break it up.

It’s like a huge job with a mess and then have to wash all the dishes used to prepare and then store and dispose of anything remaining.

And if going to the trouble then might as well make a big salad and store it in the refrigerator for later which takes up more space.

About ready to give up and just buy salads pre-made.

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I will say there’s a lot more and better salad greens at Carrefour now. I just want the greens and maybe a little onions myself. There’s a hack

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This is great to hear. One of my wife’s biggest complaints about Taiwan was the lack of available salad greens (This was 10 years ago).

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Yeah, they have these plastic bags of greens i never even heard of. Some are meant to be cooked and some eaten raw. Not really expensive in my book.

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I am in the same boat. realistically, salads are made on scale to be efficient. Group organization is the best, but not everyone wants to do that. I think 5 plus people make salad making a nothing. But of course “buying out” is easier. By proxy…

I think for lettuce greens, it might be best to just have a couple simple pots and have yours growing. Even just use the stumps from your previous salad, just add some nutrition. Its the ultimate easy crop to grow even for city people in an apartment with no space. If you have a window, or even a bright light that is always on, they grow well. They last far better with their roots in water than cut and in the fridge. Thats why many supermarkets here are selling root on style, cause…duh. the marketing teams finally agreed with the botanists. But the plastic waste with some brands is quite extreme, so they clearly have yet to discuss with health professiobals, EPA, and engineers. But thats coming soon :slight_smile:

If you buy them, plunk the butts into a jar then some soil and fertilize a bit after growth starts. Its easy, and far fresher than fridge lettuce. Note: fertilizer = nutrition. Make it as healthy, or not, as you wish. But store bought lettuce is usually sprayed a LOT and fertilized a LOT with oil based fertilizers. Nevermind certain greens, like from south west usa, that have devastating effects on the environment (desertification) and political implications (eg usa diverting water away from mexico, china doing the same to everyone around them etc)

The onions, peppers etc i have no idea how to make it easie than it already is for a person that has no land. I guess sometimes people just need to sacrifice some time for their health. Honestly, even though it takes me 20 mins to make a salad, i prefer cutting fresh veg over using the stove for 20 mins in this heat to make something else that requires cooking. The trick is justification. heat is a good one this time of year. And ccp virus is also a good one this…year…

Have you tried preserving foods? Fermenting, pickling etc adds a huge depth of flavor and is pretty easy. I HATE stinky tofu, but i LOVE the taiwanese kimchi that comes with it!!! As one example of easy fermented food.

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I like to buy as much as possible in shopping trips, store it in the fridge then toss things out four days later when it goes bad.

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Salad spinners FTW. Just cut everything up on the same board, throw it in the spinner and fill the bowl with water to rinse everything a few times. Spin it all dry. Flip the board over and cut up your cheese and meat and throw it on. Only a couple of things to wash then and it’s fast.

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Get one of those lettuce salad spinners. Keep the lettuce in that. Get a big stainless steel bowl. Mix up the other ingredients in that. One chopping board. Wash, chop up what you want. Throw it all in the bowl. Mix with a big spoon. Put the lettuce on the plate. Put the rest on top. This way you can make a variety of different salads like roast vegetables or seeds and nuts or just fresh chopped things. And the lettuce stays nice and crispy because of the salad spinner thing as there’s always a little bit of water in the bottom and the lid stops the fridge from wilting the leaves. I like to throw fruit into my salads as well. Apples are always good but mangoes are almost in season. Pepitas are pretty much a staple but I’ll also use almonds, walnuts, pecans, and other things for crunch. I make my own salad dressing using some extra virgin olive oil, citrus (any really but I really like mandarins), garlic, and either fajita spice mix or Italian herb mix. Shake up well in a glass jar with a lid. Sometimes do grilled fish to go with it but more like to use firm tofu that’s been marinated and grilled.

Hope that gives you some good ideas.

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Do you have to have salads? Or are cooked veggies fine? They both meet your fiber needs.

I buy large bags of frozen veggies from costco (i.e. broccoli) and then cook them when I need to.

Salads in the summer are fantastic. Vary the combinations so you don’t get bored. I chop some greens and put them on the salad spinner to wash and spin dry, then straight to the plates. Any combination of meat, cheese, hard-boiled eggs, nuts and fruit make it much better.
I haven’t had any luck with pre-making them. Also, it seems like the ones at 7-11 have some chemical taste to them and they definitely aren’t big enough for a meal.

Did you know that McDonald’s sells salads?

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Not if you’re organized, it will take 10 minutes to prepare. One or two cutting board(s), a good knife (eventually a thin peeler), a bowl, salt, pepper, vinegar, spices, herbs, good oil, and stuff mentioned in above posts.

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Their salads sometimes have more calories than a Big Mac. If you are eating salads for your health, it is better to make your own or get the salads in a bag.

Because they use sugared dressings.

That’s exactly why I eat Big Macs.

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A big mac has ‘salad’ on it.

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I prefer Whoppers. Bigger ‘salad’ on it.

So, youre a costco member are you?

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I gotta call bs on the salads being worse than a big mac. The dressing pouches probably, along with other nasty stuff in them im sure. But i have doubts on the chicken and veggies being that high.

Could it be?

That hurts…though I promise to finish the cucumbers next month.