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The frequent admonishment to never cut lettuce with a knife, lest the cut edges turn brown faster than hand-torn lettuce leaves, is a myth. Many cookbooks still carry the statement that a knife may “bruise the leaves.”
This myth seems to have been based on the belief that hand tearing will tear the lettuce along natural seams and thus damage fewer cells, limiting their exposure to oxygen, which turns them brown. But this isn’t true and tearing lettuce does not damage fewer cells than cutting the leaves with a knife.
It really will make no difference whatsoever which method you choose, and both will result in the lettuce turning brown at the same rate.
Before we go further, keep in mind that introducing bacteria, via the blade, to the cut edges of lettuce that you intend to store for some time, is a different subject, but one that is more of interest to commercial bagged lettuce processors than home cooks.
Torn Lettuce Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be
Sometimes hand-torn lettuce is better but at other times, uniformly cut lettuce is nice. Many “fancy” restaurants seem to have taken this myth to heart, producing green salads that have lettuce pieces of all different sizes, making it difficult to eat.
This happens with Caesar salad quite a lot, which really should have nice uniform square pieces of Romaine lettuce, if you ask me, regardless of how it may have been done in the past.
Also, you couldn’t have an iceberg wedge without a knife. But this article isn’t about whether salads should be chopped or not, which, frankly, I could care less about.
You can throw your salad ingredients in a blender and slurp them through a straw, for all I care. Tear it, cut it, bash it with a hammer, use it for toilet paper, I don’t care. This is about the myth of lettuce being damaged by cutting because I enjoy busting myths. Call it a hobby.
Incidentally, when dealing with a whole head of green lettuce such as Romaine or a leaf lettuce variety, you can actually store your leaves longer if you go ahead and cut or tear them away from the stem, and wash or dry them, making them ready for use. Just make sure to dry them well, with paper towels or even better, in a salad spinner.
As hinted at in the opening paragraphs, if you cut them, a clean knife might be a good idea. Then, store them in a bag lined with paper towels to absorb any excess moisture, which will cause the lettuce to decompose more quickly.
Don’t fall for the mistaken instruction that the paper towels should be damp to retain moisture, as this will only hasten the demise of your lettuce.
There are also green fabric bags like this VIKROM Reusable Lettuce Storage Bag you can buy to store your lettuce or other greens, which work well.
Romaine will last longer than most leaf lettuces (red leaf, butterhead, curly leaf, etc.) which will wilt terribly within 4 days, at best.
Crisp head lettuces, of which iceberg is the most well-known, will hold up the longest and can do well on its own with no preparation, for a while.
It is the superior storage qualities, and hence the ease of shipping, which made iceberg so readily available, and hence so popular, long before other varieties were commonly found in grocery stores. See also Is Iceberg Lettuce Bad and Devoid of Nutrients?
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