salad prep time

[Bkworm]

Yesterday I spent over four hours prepping salad ingredients. Then had to clean everything up afterwards. I have been watching Anne and Jane Esselstyn You Tube videos as well as several other individuals such as Chef AJ and Garbanzo Girl and several others compiling salads. They make it look so easy on the videos. While I do love the idea of constantly having salad in the refrigerator, I can't see myself going through this prep twice a week. I was exhausted by the time I finished. The salad is absolutely delicious and my fellows are having it for dinner tonight. I ate it last night and will again tonight.

The greens include half a bunch of kale, 1 romaine lettuce heart, a large amount of green cabbage as well as red cabbage. The rest of the ingredients are five or six medium carrots chopped, 4 ribs of celery, 1 large yellow squash chopped in very small bites, 2 medium zucchini shredded, 2 bunches green onions chopped, 1 large cucumber seeded and chopped in small pieces, 2 each red and green bell peppers chopped, 1 can of garbanzo beans, 1 can black beans, 1 can red kidney beans, 2 cups corn, a pint of cherry tomatoes, and some raisins, plus a small amount of raw sunflower seeds and a small amount of pumpkin seeds.

The amounts and types of veggies I used were from a garbanzo girl video and she says she does the prep twice a week. She had one large bowl that held all her veggies. I ended up using the two largest bowls in my kitchen. And they are huge. One bowl holds the greens and the second bowl all the other ingredients. My DH looked for a very large bowl today and found nothing larger than these two bowls.

I have been cooking and eating WFPB since January 2013 and have always found prepping salad to be one of the biggest challenges. By the time I wash and spin all the veggies then slice and dice them it seems to take forever. Have learned a few new methods of chopping from some of the videos and had hoped it would really help to cut back on some of the prep time but no such luck. With the three of us eating the salad, one usually lasts at most about 4 days, not an entire week.

How does everyone else manage to keep salad on hand? In the past I have used prepped veggies from the store such as angel shredded cabbage, chopped onions, chopped lettuce, shredded carrots, chopped bell peppers, etc., but the salads are not as good as preparing the veggies fresh. Most of the time, I eat the salads made from prep veggies from the store. My fellows really don't care for them and neither do I for the most part. Thankfully my DH was home to help with the harder veggies such as the celery. I used a small veggie chopper for the carrots and onions. I love the small veggies chopper when prepping veggies for soups and stews, etc., but not so much for salads.

Can anyone share their salad prep secrets with me? How long does it take for you to prep and prepare a salad? Any suggested videos?

Am enjoying the fruit of my labors but still tired from it all today. Is part of the problem the fact that due to the RA my hands aren't as strong as once and that just slows me down? I just don't get it. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for any input.

[sirdle]

Hello Bkwrm,

I make a salad twice a week. It takes 30-45 min and results in about 20 cups of salad... which lasts me about 4 days.

It used to take me 60-90 min, but I made two huge changes.

1. my wife bought me a larger cutting board...

... using a larger cutting board cut prep time by about 10 min. I didn't expect that at all, but I guess I used to spend a lot of time trying to keep my cuttings from shooting off the cutting board and ending up on the floor.

2. I started cutting down on the number of different ingredients...

... I 'rotate' some of the ingredients for variety. For example, each week I might use a different bean (although I like garbanzo beans the best). One week I might use spinach, the next, romaine... etc.

Typical salad:
5 oz salad greens
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 cucumber
1 zucchini
2 red bell peppers
1 can garbanzo beans
3 ribs celery
12-15 pieces of chopped peperoncini
5 mandarin oranges (when in season)

Notes:
1. I buy pre-washed greens in a 5 oz container
2. I use a vegetable scrub brush and running water to clean my veggies.
3. I cut the zucchini, cucumber, and celery in quarters length-wise, and then slice.
4. I do not seed the cucumber.
5. I do seed the bell peppers
6. I do not cut the cherry tomatoes.
7. I purchase pre-sliced peperoncini

I eat salad for lunch. In the evenings I eat some sort of steamed (frozen) vegetable (so no cutting required): carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus, green beans, artichoke hearts.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

[Lyndzie]

Hey there. We hardly ever eat salad, and when we do it’s usually romaine, cucumbers and tomatoes, as a small salad with a meal. Since you live in a warmer climate, salads are probably perfect, but I just do not find them satiating are all. Have you been using the grating and slicing disks that came with your food processor? That could speed things up. Also, I think Mark Cooper (in this forum) has a salad routine as well. He might have some tips.

But, if I am in a salad mood, I use:
- romaine
- chickpeas
- radishes, matchsticks
- Carrots, matchsticks
- apple, matchsticks
- English cucumber, diced
- maybe raisins?

You could easily just grate the radishes, carrots and apple in the food processor, so the only thing you would cut is the cucumber. I like tahini dressing with apple cider vinegar. Good luck!

[VeggieSue]

I'm with Lyndzie when it comes to salad. I prefer my veggies cooked, and we eat a lot of veggies in this family.

The salad you described is a small one compared to what others on-line are making. That was a one or 2 day salad, not what others call "batch prep" for salads.

Chef AJ once showed her 32 cup Tupperware bowl that held ONLY greens - she had multiple other containers or gallon sized zip bags with other ingredients. I can't find the video with that big blue bowl, but here's another one she showed of her making salad. In this one, she had all her ingredients already sliced and prepped. She already had other things in the bowl in the fridge with the greens, like sliced cabbage. It starts around 29 minutes into this video:

https://youtu.be/3mADxtiCCX8?t=1751

One of her "coaches" Tami Kramer has a video on-line showing how she does salad prep. Again, she already had most of her veggies cleaned and sliced before starting the rest of the prep in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIKa2A1qg60&t=182s

She uses a 13 quart bowl to mix it all together and usually has to do it in 2 batches. She fills 10 of the 9-cup containers so she and her husband can have those big salads all ready for the next 5 days.

Here's another where she preps the salads, then is shown at the end chopping one up in her Holland Mills wooden bowl:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3K6ChYiaZg

She did a few more salad prep videos but each show the same thing, really. One shows how her husband usually helps in all the slicing and dicing prep.


I much prefer to save salads for an occasional summer treat and stick with my cooked greens and veggies.

[Mark Cooper]

Also, I think Mark Cooper (in this forum) has a salad routine as well. He might have some tips.

I do definitely have a salad routine!
I'm not sure whether you'll find this helpful or not, Bkworm.
I eat 2 big salads pretty much everyday - probably about 10-12 loose cups each. I love salad and always make it fresh for each salad each day and I've sort of optimized my prep to the point that it takes me about 10-15 minutes for each salad. I do keep a salad spinner filled with torn lettuce in the fridge and replenish whenever I empty it.

My typical salad consists of :
2 big handfuls of lettuce (typically iceberg)
3-4 ribs of celery, chopped
1/3 of an english cucumber, chopped
1/2 of a beefsteak tomato, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, minced
2-3 carrots, shredded
1 apple, chopped
1 orange, chopped or 1 cup berries (or sometimes both)

I dress my salads with 2 Tbsp lemon juice, 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar, 1 Tbsp Balsamic vinegar and 1 Tbsp no salt seasoning.

I wash all ingredients in the sink first, prep and throw in the bowl in the order above and then mix. What really helped to cut down on prep time for me was getting really serious about learning and training myself in proper knife handling and cutting techniques. I think Derek Simnett recently did a pretty great video on knives and knife handling.

Here is a pic of one of my salads to give some idea. (They are ridiculously huge.)
Everyday Salad by Mark Cooper, on Flickr

Again, don't know if that helps and I definitely want to reiterate that eating so much salad is my personal preference and not necessary for MWL by any means.

[Jobet]

My salad prep is very much like Marks. I make it fresh each time, but, there is only one of me, so don't need a lot at once. I do add beans, brown rice pasta, millet, or quinoa to my salads and eat it every morning for breakfast. I love it and it helps me not to crave food mid morning. Just had dental surgery this week and couldn't eat anything solid for a day. I craved my salad. So, I made a large smoothie instead with lots of greens, a pear, a couple dates, cinnamon, ginger, and water. OMGosh! Thought I was going to starve! It was good at the moment but it wasn't satiating at all. I haven't had smoothies since starting this WOE almost two years ago, so I realized how they were actually making me crave food when I used to have them daily, thinking they were healthy. Live and learn!

[vegman]

I just timed it at 15 minutes to prepare enough salad for today, to accompany two meals (one person).

I use a Japanese carbon steel vegetable knife that I sharpen periodically on a sharpening stone, an Oxo vegetable peeler, and a plastic cutting board.

I trimmed leftover iceberg lettuce and a new small romaine heart, put them into a bowl with water, separated the leaves, and under running water rinsed them and put them one by one on the cutting board. Then I took them all from the board, squeezed out the excess water, and drained the cutting board of water. Then I chopped the lettuce and put it into an empty bowl.

I washed, cut and added to the bowl cherry tomatoes. I trimmed, washed, cut and added celery, zucchini, cucumber, and a carrot a portion of a beet that I first peeled.

Finally, I mixed everything together with my hands, put half into a container to refrigerate for later, and left the other half in the bowl to eat with my first meal. The total amount is about 7 or 8 cups.

I usually don't use any dressing, consistent with my preference for no spices, salt, sugar, etc.

Over the past months I feel better if I eat salad every day. It will be interesting to see whether I still want salad as the weather gets colder here. I’ve been surprised at how filling salads are.

Along with salad, a typical meal consists of a soup, potatoes and sweet potatoes, and fruit such as a raw apple.

[PJK]

Another time-saving tip: Wash, dry and bag your lettuce right after shopping. Then you'll have clean, ready-to-eat lettuce all week.

Chop off the base, then soak the now-loose leaves in cold water for 5 minutes. Then spin dry, place on a towel (leaf by leaf) to dry. After 5 mins, flip the leaves over. After another 5 mins, bag the lettuce (we use ziplock bags) and store in fridge. Done.

Yes, it's a bit of work, but now you have clean lettuce as the base for for quick salads.

We make salad almost every day for lunch. With our lettuce ready to eat, it takes no more than 10 minutes to wash and chop up the rest.

Same with salad dressing. Make a big batch and then use during the week. If you like more variation, make 2 or even 3 batches of different dressings.

[Bkworm]

Wow, such fantastic input. Thank you to everyone who responded. Definitely going to implement some of the suggestions, such as washing items when I bring them home from the store. Then that step is out of the way when I go to put the salad together. Know I will also go back to using some of the pre-washed and bagged ingredients again. Found someone in our area to sharpen all our knives. His prices are very reasonable. That should make a difference, too.

The salad I put together last Friday lasted until yesterday with the three of us eating it. I did need to prepare another large bowl of just the various greens as we used that up rather quickly.

Thanks again for all the suggestions.