How To Core And Chop Lettuce

Some people swear by ceramic or plastic knives for cutting lettuce. The idea is that metal knives cause the leaves to turn brown at the edges faster. Actually, it’s not the metal that does it. What happens is any cutting will cut cells, which then turn brown. If you want your lettuce to last longer don’t cut it. Rip the leaves by hand.

I usually don’t see the problem, though. When I buy lettuce, I have salad at every meal until it’s gone.

Directions

First up, the core. You can cut this out if you really want to. But it’s way easier this way:

Set the bottom — the side you just pulled the core out of — down and cut it in half.

Then in quarters.

You could stop now and serve what the trendy restaurants are calling a “wedge salad”.

If you haven’t seen it they literally take those wedges you see above and pour some dressing over it. Yeah, that’s a salad. Okay.

But for normal people who aren’t trying to impress anyone, it’s better to do just a little more work and get the lettuce into bite-sized pieces. So put one half — two quarters — down flat, start at one end, and chop about an inch wide all the way across.

And that’s it.