Spice your salad from boring to delicious

In the US, most varieties of lettuce can be grouped into four types: butter heads, crisp potatoes (icebergs), leaf lettuce, and romaine lettuce. You are probably most familiar with iceberg head lettuces which are large and compact. They have little flavor and few nutrients. You could do more good to your body just by drinking a glass of water. Head lettuce always went bad before I could eat it all anyway.

Butterheads have small, round, loose heads with pale green, sweet-tasting leaves. You see them in the store as Bibb or Boston. They are one step ahead of the iceberg because they have more flavor. Romaine lettuce is also very popular. It is oblong in shape with dark green outer leaves that lighten as you get closer to the center. Romaine lettuce is used for Caesar salads and is crunchy. It has a slightly bitter taste. Mustard, lemon juice, and black pepper are good spices to use with a Caesar salad.

Perhaps my favorites, especially since I can grow them in my garden, are leaf lettuces. As you can see from their name, they are not as compact as the others and generally come from a single stem in a variety of ways. They are darker green or red in color, have more vitamins and flavor, and can go bad faster than lettuce, so buy them the same day you want to use them. Better yet, grow them in your garden and just pick them, along with your tomatoes and peppers, as you need them for your salads.

The term “vegetables” refers to the leaves of edible plants. Some of the most common are chicory (curly endive), chard, dandelion, mustard, and turnip. They are all rich in nutrients and easy to handle. You can simmer them for ten minutes, steam them, or eat them raw.

One of the ways to spice up a salad is to add a spicy green to it. For example, arugula or mustard greens have a spicy, slightly bitter taste and can be paired with something sweet, like raisins or blueberries in a salad. Who doesn’t have dandelions in their garden? Use the leaves for your salad, but collect them before the dandelion really blooms. If you find the endive too bitter, try the endive. It belongs to the same family, but the leaves are broad and pale green in color and the taste is not so bitter. If you use turnip greens, keep in mind that the youngest and smallest ones tend to taste sweeter.

For any green salad, including spinach, use some of the spices you bought for that recipe. What was it again? Marjoram, tarragon, and thyme are good choices, along with herbs like chervil and chives. For spinach-based salads, try anise, caraway seeds, dill, mace, nutmeg, oregano, or rosemary. It sounds like it can handle a variety, but don’t try them all at once. Basil or mint are also good in a mixed green salad. Don’t forget the walnuts. It adds a nice crunch on its own, and it has good cholesterol and amino acids. For the best flavor, you can’t go wrong with the bacon dressing on your spinach salad.

If you really want to be smart, find out what the cook is using for his barbecue sauce, and try incorporating some of the same or contrasting spices into his salad (sweet to spicy or salty to sweet, for example). Remember to finely chop fresh herbs to release more flavor. Use a full teaspoon of fresh herbs or a quarter teaspoon of dried or ground spices for every two servings (or for every pound) until you are more familiar with their overall effect. Salads no longer have to be bland and boring. Spice it up and don’t let the grill master get all the praise!