Scissors Are All You Need For The Perfect Chopped Salad

A chopped salad is exactly what it sounds like: a salad composed of things that are chopped. Sometimes there's meat and cheese involved, sometimes there are beans or hard-boiled eggs, and sometimes there are little surprises like raisins or nuts. Regardless, you can usually assume that the denizens of any given chopped salad were hacked to relatively uniform pieces by a knife. But speaking of hacks, if you're interested in making things even easier on yourself, you can supplement your knife work with a good old pair of kitchen shears. 

In a pinch, you can reach for the scissors you use for craft projects and box-opening purposes (just clean them thoroughly beforehand), but if you can get your hands on a pair of shears specifically meant for the kitchen, that's even better. Kitchen shears are equipped with removable blades (for cleaning purposes), super-strong steel, and extra-sharp blades that can cut through tough tendons, which makes them a useful tool for preparing things like raw chicken and other types of meat. They're also great for cutting vegetables, making them indispensable for your next chopped salad. 

One defining feature of a chopped salad is evenly chopped vegetables that are easy to eat. It's not like an iceberg wedge or a kale Caesar, which may require a knife and fork. To achieve perfect uniform bites, give your knife and cutting board a break by chopping up your lettuce, bell peppers, and other forgiving vegetables with shears. You might be surprised by how much it speeds up the process. 

For a chopped salad, go with greens that have a little crunch. Green leaf lettuce, iceberg, and kale are all excellent contenders, and they're all easy to chop with shears. As for the rest of the salad, think of it as a complete meal in a bowl — one that runs the gamut of your favorite vegetables, proteins, and add-ins. A meat-eaters version might feature salami and browned soppressata, while a vegetarian version could swap cured meat for chickpeas. A crumbly cheese, such as feta, goat, or blue cheese, is a welcome finishing touch.

In addition to their obvious uses (cutting through raw chicken, bacon, and other slippery meat products with ease) and not-so-obvious ones (making a fantastic-looking chopped salad), kitchen shears can come in handy for all sorts of home cookery, not to mention small home-improvement tasks.  

One of the tool's neatest and most overlooked features is the jagged mirrored curves that form an oval between the handles. You can use that area to pop off bottle caps, crack open nuts and shellfish, and, when stretched wide, open pesky jars. Some shears even come with built-in flathead screwdrivers attached to the blades. 

Kitchen shares are also great for cutting fresh herbs that might otherwise stick to your fingers and cutting board. Whatever you do, try to avoid using your kitchen shears to regularly cut paper or fabric — you want to keep the blades nice and sharp, should you need to, say, spatchcock a chicken.