[chiffonade]

Originally posted by SeattleDeb
Anyone use a salad spinner when cleaning lettuce?

Abso-freakin-lutely. This is the best way not to have your perfectly emuslified vinaigrette be made into a watery mess after it's applied to the greens. Also, a salad spinner enables you to clean your lettuce in advance and store in the fridge in a bowl or ziplock bag that has a paper towel in it.

I wish I could financially justify buying pre-cleaned greens. I'd eat a heckuva lot more salad.

Our salad spinner is probably one of the best kitchen purchases I've ever made.

[Svadhisthana]

One of the "quick tips" in the April issue of Cook's Illustrated is too add a few paper towels in with the lettuce to speed up the process a bit.

[kemperr]

I am looking to purchase a Salad Spinner and I was planning to purchase the OXO Good Grips 32480, which comes highly recommended.

However, my eye got caught on an electronic salad spinner made by Girmi of Italy (model CE30). It appears you maybe fill it with water, start it up, and it drains itself as it spins. It comes with a removable rechargable battery. That is all I know about it... it is available at amazon.com for $20 (no reviews, list price $50).

Any comments about the choices?

[Mangilao30]

I use the spinner with the string pulley thingey. I like this one best. In Italy the market salad is very dirty, gritty, fresh from the garden. I soak the lettuce in cold water and pull gently on the string while there is lettuce and water in the bowl. This cleans them well. Then I pour the grit out and rinse, works wonders.

[FLcookie]

I just recently purchased the Oxo Salad Spinner from Target (here is a link: http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html...sin=B0000644FC
and I really like it. Prior to that I used one that I purchased from Winn Dixie that was really inexpensive and you let water run into it to wash the salad and twist the knob to make it spin to get rid of the water. I think I have had that one for at least 10 years. I use my salad spinners all the time and would hate to be without one. The inexpensive one takes up less room but I like the Oxo best!!!

Hope this helps!

Pam

[MarkV]

I've never tried the paper towel thing. What I do is spin my greens twice. After the first spin, I drain the water, rearrange the leaves and spin again. I always get more water and they're almost completely dry.

I also have a mini-spinner I use for herbs. It's particularly good for drying parsley quickly.

Mark

[Brianhuevo]

Bump! (we'll it has been a year since last post)

Hi, i'm looking to buy a salad spinner and was wondering if anybody has any recommendations?

[kokopuffs]

I use the one made by OXO and it works great. Costs around $25.

[castironchef]

Yup. The OXO is the way to go on salad spinners. It's the only one I know of that you can do one-handed. Both the pull string and spin the crank models require you to hold them in place with one hand while activating with the other.

Well, I guess you could do the electric one with one hand, but why use electricity?

[Brianhuevo]

Thanks guys, i've checked out the OXO and it looks and feels great so i'll probably pick one up.

[kokopuffs]

And OXO offers GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE. They replaced my free of charge after it melted in the dishwasher albeit it's been diswasher washed previously for many years.

[Free Rider]

My salad spinner is one of my favorite kitchen items. The $2 investment was well worth it.