My Green Salad

May is the National Salad Month!

The first and fairly straightforward reason you want a salad spinner today is to clean your greens. Note that even if your salad bag says it is triple washed, I still recommend you wash your green leaves. Even better, avoid all those plastic bags, and buy fresh at the store each time you need a lettuce, cabbage, kale, etc.

Salad spinners all use the same technology, centrifuge force to separate the water from the green leaves. And this technology has been used for a very long time, since people decided to wash green leaves and eat them. The one your grandmother used was likely a collapsible wire basket. The use of this basket is very simple: you wash your salad in the sink and then put it in the basket, go outside and turn your arm as fast as possible to eject the water. It can be sometimes painful for your shoulder or your arm. Fortunately, there are now much easier spinners with nice designs and colors, and most importantly provide an easy, non painful way to spin your salad.

The difference with these modern spinners is the mechanism to spin the salad leverages centrifugal force. Most are manual, but there are some electric options. Salad spinners may offer different options such as stabilizers, handles, water drains, etc.

If you are considering buying one today, I would suggest looking at those which can do other jobs. For example, if you are inclined to make your own mozzarella, you may want to separate the juice from the mozzarella and an appropriate salad spinner would do the job perfectly.

If you are traveling or camping in the wilderness, you might consider a big manual one to wash and spin your wet clothes.

If you have used a salad spinner for another purpose, do not hesitate to share your ideas.