Massage Tough Greens For Better Salads

If you're making or ordering a salad, you're most likely going to be dealing with a base of lettuce: romaine, iceberg, butter, or whatever variety floats your boat. Maybe you're getting fancy and having a spinach salad. Maybe you're even stretching to the exotic and adding — gasp! — arugula to the mix. But you can use all sorts of greens in salads, including tougher ones such as white cabbage, kale, or Swiss chard.

Sure, tougher greens like kale are more nutritious than iceberg lettuce, but they're hard to chew, and you may not want to do that. Luckily, there's an important trick to know about their preparation that will really help that problem, meaning you can have a salad green that's more than just a vehicle for ranch dressing without having to dislocate your jaw to eat it. The answer is simple: give the salad a little massage first. Seriously.

It may seem silly, but it makes sense: this is the vegetable equivalent of hitting a piece of meat repeatedly with a hammer to tenderize it. Massaging your greens breaks them down, tenderizing them the same way slow-cooking does for a piece of meat like brisket with a lot of collagen. Even if it feels like you're not accomplishing anything by massaging your greens while it's happening, you'll notice the result when you eat your salad.

Just be sure to apply a small amount of oil or lemon juice before you start because otherwise, you might rip apart the pieces during the process. Unless your goal is a shredded salad, you don't want that. And even if that is your endpoint, you should still massage them first because giving the greens a back rub before you shred them will make the shards a lot easier to chew.

There's another mistake many people make with one tough green in particular, which you should learn to avoid, both in salads and when cooking. Kale is a divisive vegetable, which makes sense because improperly prepared kale feels like it takes years off your life to chew. But there's a reason for this, and it's usually that whoever prepared it left on the stems, which are borderline inedible, especially when raw. People often assume that since the stems are less tasty, that must mean it's where all the nutritional value lies, but that's bunk: there's no difference in the amount of nutrients you get from kale leaves versus stems. Cutting off your kale stems can turn what seems like a disgusting vegetable into an absolute delight.

All food is about knowing how to prepare it, and tough, leafy greens are no exception. Whether it's cutting off your kale stems or giving it a deep tissue massage, you should always give your food the proper treatment to get the most out of your dinner.