What Salad Leaves Do You Use?

KKBL

For all the salad lovers out there I want to know which leaves you use and why! Some will go for rocket or romaine lettuce and others will prefer plain aul iceberg lettuce. Or maybe there's a particular brand of prepackaged salad leaves that you purchase form a store? Spill the beans!

emaleth

Baby spinach for me.

squonk

rocket

LaChatteGitane

That depends entirely on what I am serving it with. Different leaves for different accompliments.
As standard I use iceberg a lot. I always have it in the fridge as a standby.
Rocket (I've always grown my own perpetual) works well with goats cheese; lardons and a balsamic dressing.
Corn salad, for instance, goes well with raw chicory.
Mixed leaves with a variety of colour goes well with smoked maigret de canard or paté with a savoury-sweet fruity sauce.

Well, that is how I use my lettuce leaves.

ps forgot. Romaine lettuce for Caesar Salad.

the beer revolu

I'm a great fan of plain old butter head or round lettuce - the bog standard one as seen in every supermarket. I love rocket too. In the summer we usually have a variety of leaves in the garden but always rocket cause it grows so well in our garden.
Mustard leaves are great mixed through a leaf salad too.

Roesy

Rocket, love the peppery taste. Also a fan of baby spinach in salads.

homemadecider

Baby leaf salad leaves from Lidl. Best I've found on the market.

Alun

homemadecider wrote: »

Baby leaf salad leaves from Lidl. Best I've found on the market.

Yes, there's one that they display amongst the normal salad stuff rather than in the fridge section, and they're great. I especially love the little beet leaves they have in them.

bhamsteve

Unrelated to the OP, but here's a nice recipe for any left-over lettuce, works equally well with iceberg;

Petits Pois a la Francaise

You can stir in a good spoon of sour cream or creme fraiche at the end to make it even better. Takes 5 minutes to cook and goes well with fish, chicken.
Enjoy.

KKBL

Never heard of baby leaf spinach! How is it different form regular spinach?
I personally hate iceberg, its so bland and I don't like the texture. It's said to be the least nutritious of the salad leaves too.

Tar.Aldarion

Rocket is the tastiest.

awec

bhamsteve wrote: »

Unrelated to the OP, but here's a nice recipe for any left-over lettuce, works equally well with iceberg;

Petits Pois a la Francaise

You can stir in a good spoon of sour cream or creme fraiche at the end to make it even better. Takes 5 minutes to cook and goes well with fish, chicken.
Enjoy.

Somebody was watching Masterchef tonight.

kylith

I love a bit of Little Gem.

bhamsteve

awec wrote: »

Somebody was watching Masterchef tonight.

Not tonight but Michel Roux Jr has cooked it and talked about it in several of his shows. I first made it a few weeks ago and it is now my favorite summer veg dish. Them Frenchies sure know how to cook.

Cheshire Cat

I love lamb's lettuce. Very nice with a bit of apple, a few slices of beetroot, nuts and a nut oil dressing.

Can't stand butterhead and iceberg lettuce. Little gem/romaine, radicchio, frisee, oak leaf and lollo rosso are all nice.

Lidl sells "continental lettuce" with the roots still on. Tastes very nice and keeps really fresh, if you water it a bit.

emaleth

KKBL wrote: »

Never heard of baby leaf spinach! How is it different form regular spinach?
I personally hate iceberg, its so bland and I don't like the texture. It's said to be the least nutritious of the salad leaves too.

I don't care for iceberg all that much either.

Baby spinach is just smaller, fresher regular spinach. The leaves are about the size of a two euro coin, and they come in a bag, usually sold wherever the rest of the lettuces and salad ingredients are in the supermarket. In terms of flavour profile, it's spinach so it is iron-y, but it's not bitter. Maybe midway between lollo rosso and radicchio? It's lovely mixed with another leaf, and it can take strong dressings.

Layinghen

Love rocket. Aldi do a lovely bag of the baby spinach leaves which would be a second favourite and very good for you.

Lettuce is the most worthwhile thing to grow if you ask me.
There is world of difference in taste, between the freshly cut home grown stuff and what you can buy.

Alun

Yes, and rocket, at least the wild version, is ridiculously easy to grow, it's like a weed.

April O Neill

Hate iceberg. I like good ol' round leaf lettuce.

Not keen on bitter, "planty" tasting leaves. I'm not a huge salad fan anyway, in general.

ibarelycare

Definitely spinach. I always have it in the fridge as I love it fresh in salads or wraps, or else wilted and adding it to stir fries or scrambled eggs. So versatile! I'm sure you can do the same with rocket and other leaves, but I really like the flavour of spinach too

Shenshen

I'm not a big fan of iceberg or spinach, I find they've very little taste to them.

I would usually use roundhead lettuce as a sort of basis, essentially to bulk up the salad, and then add whatever leaves I fancy.

My two absolute favourite are lamb's lettuce (I was over the moon when Lidl started selling that in Ireland some 2 years ago, I hadn't been able to find it here much before) and radicchio (which I'm having serious problems finding in Ireland, unfortunately), but I don't mind a bit of rocket and young chard leaves.

It really always depends on what else I add to the salad.

Alun

That's funny, radicchio is the only one I don't really care for ... too bitter for my taste.

Dubl07

A decent, freshly-made vinaigrette with some honey easily balances bitterness in salad leaves. It's a doddle to make as well.

2 fl oz light oil (I use grapeseed)
1 fl oz evoo
1 fl oz wine vinegar, cider vinegar or fruit vinegar depending on the other meal components
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp grainy mustard
1 tsp honey
salt
pepper

whisk/shake it all together.

Studies have proved that oil of some kind is necessary in order to get the max benefits from salads, especially the iron-rich kind.

Shenshen

Dubl07 wrote: »

A decent, freshly-made vinaigrette with some honey easily balances bitterness in salad leaves. It's a doddle to make as well.

2 fl oz light oil (I use grapeseed)
1 fl oz evoo
1 fl oz wine vinegar, cider vinegar or fruit vinegar depending on the other meal components
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp grainy mustard
1 tsp honey
salt
pepper

whisk/shake it all together.

Studies have proved that oil of some kind is necessary in order to get the max benefits from salads, especially the iron-rich kind.

Little tip on this one :

Mix the mustard with the oil first, and whisk until smooth. Otherwise you might end up with the mustard not fully dissolved in the vinaigrette.

Other than that I would agree, honey mustard is THE dressing for any bitter salad leaves, be it endives or radicchio or chicory. Absolutely lovely.

VanillaLime

kylith wrote: »

I love a bit of Little Gem.

me too.

kylith

This week's salads will be
Little Gem
Baby Spinach
Beetroot
Cherry Tomato
Cottage Cheese
Chicken Breast
Balsamic Vinegrette.

Nomnomnom

elfy4eva

It's Iceberg all the way for me, great on the plate and lovely and crisp for that salad sandwich the next day!

Which reminds me!!! I was watching Jamie Oliver's 15 minute meals before and he had a right snobbish attitude to Iceberg salads saying they took no effort! Well ya can Fook right off Jamie because they taste the business!

babaduck

Rocket & Lambs Lettuce with a bitta Escarole and grated carrot or beetroot. Florette's Bistro salad is pretty decent if I'm being very lazy

Qualitymark

I love those little gem lettuces. Also frisée, rocket (usually have it in the garden), oak leaf, and the baby spinach that hasn't yet developed the chalkiness of older beet-spinach.
There's a stratospheric difference between the taste of supermarket bags of washed leaves and what you pick from the garden at home - it's well worth sowing a couple of windowboxes of cut-and-come-again greens mixtures.
And I almost never make a green salad without a good sprinkling of fresh parsley over it. (For those in Dublin, the shop beside Lidl in Rathmines - Middle Eastern? Lithuanian? Some type-a furriners anyway, and nice people - has big huge bunches of tasty flat-leaf giant parsley for €1.50. They're ace for things like those little flavourful cucumbers too.

Pjays

Love the peppery taste of watercress. Recently, I have started using lamb's lettuce also as it looks really well in a salad.