The Salad Spinner With 33,000 Excellent Opinions on Amazon—It’s the Solely One I Suggest

Welcome to One Merely Terrific Factor, our ongoing collection highlighting the small instruments and kitchen items that make life higher.

Years in the past I heard legendary chef Alice Waters wax poetic about how she hand dries lettuce with fabric towels, taking care to not bruise a single leaf. Whereas I like chef Waters’ cooking chops, that would by no means be me.

Certain, leafy greens in my home are handled with reverence, however any drying is completed in my OXO Salad Spinner ($29.99 for the big). I take into account it a can’t-live-without kitchen device that I pull out almost on daily basis.

How I Use My OXO Salad Spinner

The job of a salad spinner is easy: to dry lettuce. It’s an essential activity since salad dressing gained’t cling if the leaves are moist—plus, no one likes soggy lettuce. I’ve two methods to strategy it relying on how soiled the greens are: 

1. There’s Little Apparent Dust on the Greens: If there’s little apparent grime, set the colander of the spinner within the sink, add the lettuce, and run it underneath chilly water, sloughing off any particles together with your thumbs. Then, shake the colander, drop it into the spinner bowl, pop on the lid, and pump it as many instances as essential to dry the leaves. When you’ve got quite a lot of lettuce, do that in batches, since lettuce gained’t dry when the bowl is crowded.

2. The Greens Are Visibly Soiled: If the greens are notably soiled, put the bowl of the salad spinner—minus the colander—within the sink, fill it with chilly water, and add the lettuce. Swirl the leaves round and slough off the grime, which can drift to the underside of the bowl. Then, raise the leaves out of the water and into the spinner’s colander. It’s possible you’ll want to do that greater than as soon as till the water within the bowl seems clear. Then, proceed as described above.

The OXO Salad Spinner Is not Simply For Salad Greens

It’s price noting {that a} salad spinner is helpful for loads of different produce past lettuce. It does a bang-up job drying recent herbs, darkish leafy greens, shredded cabbage, broccoli, berries, and the checklist goes on. You may even use it to spin extra water off of cooked pasta—a terrific concept if you happen to’re making pasta salad or a chilly noodle dish.

In the end, what I really like about my salad spinner is that it makes fast work of prepping greens. And having leafy greens on the prepared means I’m that rather more more likely to eat them—including kale to scrambled eggs, piling arugula onto sandwiches, and tossing collectively salads for dinner.

One other plus? Manning the salad spinner is likely one of the extra satisfying kitchen chores on the market and a perfect activity to outsource to youngsters. I wish to assume that even Alice Waters may agree.

BUY IT: OXO Salad Spinner