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Preserving herbs and lettuce greens
Posted 01-14-2008 at 07:09 PM by Nicko
Around New Years I purchased several bunches of parsley (one of which was still alive and kicking) and I had a crazy idea on how to preserve them. First let me say my idea is untested so I will have to post back on the actual success of my idea.
For a number of years I have had a food saver system which I use to vacuum seal bacon that I make as well as other things that end up in the freezer. The original food saver I had was marginal but about a year ago I bought an updated model for under $100 and it has proven an excellent tool in the kitchen.
In general I find I use my food saver mostly to seal chicken and meat, sometimes I use it for fish and also lunch meat. Sealing moist foods has never worked very well but with the new model moist foods do seal better. But my vacuum sealing has never really gone beyond the above items till this week.
Over the weekend I purchased a large container of mescaline blend lettuces much more actually than we can eat before it goes bad. What we do to preserve our lettuce life is wash it and the put it in the salad spinner. After spinning the lettuce we store it in the spinner in the fridge. So the with half the container of lettuce in the salad spinner I was wondering what to do with the other half. That is when it hit me; why not use the food saver?
Before I ran off and pulled out my food saver I thought long and hard about whether it would actually crush the lettuce cell. While it was certainly possible I was going to try and cut off the vacuum process before it crushed the lettuce into mush. And that is exactly what happened. I began the vacuum process and just when I felt it was right I hit the seal button and it sealed up the lettuce nicely. So here is what it looks like:
While I was at it I decided I would try to keep the flat leaf parsely around a little longer and sealed it up as well. There is one difference though I wrapped the parsely in a lightly moist paper towel. It turned out like so:
I would be very interested to hear from others if you have tried this method and if it worked. Hopefully I will open the lettuce up in a few days and let you know how it worked.
For a number of years I have had a food saver system which I use to vacuum seal bacon that I make as well as other things that end up in the freezer. The original food saver I had was marginal but about a year ago I bought an updated model for under $100 and it has proven an excellent tool in the kitchen.
In general I find I use my food saver mostly to seal chicken and meat, sometimes I use it for fish and also lunch meat. Sealing moist foods has never worked very well but with the new model moist foods do seal better. But my vacuum sealing has never really gone beyond the above items till this week.
Over the weekend I purchased a large container of mescaline blend lettuces much more actually than we can eat before it goes bad. What we do to preserve our lettuce life is wash it and the put it in the salad spinner. After spinning the lettuce we store it in the spinner in the fridge. So the with half the container of lettuce in the salad spinner I was wondering what to do with the other half. That is when it hit me; why not use the food saver?
Before I ran off and pulled out my food saver I thought long and hard about whether it would actually crush the lettuce cell. While it was certainly possible I was going to try and cut off the vacuum process before it crushed the lettuce into mush. And that is exactly what happened. I began the vacuum process and just when I felt it was right I hit the seal button and it sealed up the lettuce nicely. So here is what it looks like:
While I was at it I decided I would try to keep the flat leaf parsely around a little longer and sealed it up as well. There is one difference though I wrapped the parsely in a lightly moist paper towel. It turned out like so:
I would be very interested to hear from others if you have tried this method and if it worked. Hopefully I will open the lettuce up in a few days and let you know how it worked.
Total Comments 1
Comments
 |  How did it work, NIcko? I also have a FoodSaver and get a lot of use out of it. I've thought about using the containers for delecate items like this but haven't tried it yet. |
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