Author: Preserving lettuce is easy with this simple trick. Fresh from the store or the garden, this method keeps lettuce fresh for up to 5 weeks!
Trying to eat well is hard enough, trying to eat well on a budget can seem nearly impossible at times! But, with a few tricks and a little focus, you can eat great food on a tiny budget!
One of the ways we do that is to make sure that none of our food is going to waste either by going bad before we get to it, or by having a fridge so full that we forget about something. Of course, we keep our menu plans tight and stick to them rigidly. But in addition to that, we also make sure that we are storing our foods properly.
This goes for food we purchased at the store and food we grew ourselves! There’s nothing I hate more when trying to budget than seeing food spoil due to improper storage techniques… and lettuce is one of the worst offenders!
How to Store Lettuce
If you are growing your own lettuce, you can keep it in the ground for fresh lettuce everyday. However, once the weather gets too hot the lettuce will start to bolt and then you have to figure out a way to keep it fresh inside!
This is the very best method I’ve found for keeping lettuce crisp and green for long periods of time – whether from the garden or the grocery store!
Tip: If you’re using this tip on store bought lettuce, make sure the lettuce shows no signs of wilting when you buy it!
My beautiful lettuce from the garden this year, about to be picked because the weather was getting too darn hot!
>> Find out how we grew 1500 pounds of food with zero weeding or watering!
So after years of trying everything I finally discovered the Queen Mother of all lettuce tips! And BOY do I wish I could take credit for this. I really really do! But I stumbled upon this trick because I got a little lazy one day.
Anyway, I bought this lettuce, cut the end off and shoved it unwashed into a Ziploc back and put it in the bottom drawer of my fridge. That’s the lazy bit there; I usually wash it before putting it in the bag to make prep easier as the week goes on.
We had our sandwiches and salads that week and I honestly forgot about the remaining lettuce.
Don’t judge me here…
But it was WEEKS later that I remembered it and went to throw it out before it liquefied all over my drawers.
Much to my surprise I opened the drawer to find the lettuce completely in tact! We used the rest over the course of the next week and it never did go bad! So 5 full weeks after I put it in the bag it was still perfect!
I really thought it was a fluke, so I tried it several more times and it worked every time! Ok, here’s the secret to keeping lettuce fresh for over a month (which you may have already figured out)…
DON’T WASH THE LETTUCE.
That’s it. Cut the end off, put it in a bag and wash each leaf right before you need it. No more wasted money on putrefied lettuce!
This is information you need if you don’t use much lettuce each week, or you just found a great deal and want to stock up, or perhaps you are fighting the heat and need to get your hard earned heads of lettuce out of the ground!
Whatever the reason, this tip is an absolute must when it comes to keeping your lettuce fresh!
3/21/19 Great Idea! will definately try NOT WASHING FIRST. Do you seal bag tight or leave it open?
Hi Veronica! I press all the air out of my bags and it works great! Oxygen and moisture being the things that cause food to go bad, I figure it’s best to reduce both as much as possible! Enjoy!
Another tip that I found and it really works great. Wash your lettuce, break it up into bite size pieces, dry in a lettuce spinner. Put into glass jars and it keeps for weeks. It’s very crisp too!
Put a lid on the jar after putting in the lettuce.
Great idea Julie! Especially it people just want to use the lettuce for salads :-) Thanks for sharing!
I tried this hack 4 times and it works great ?
Thx
I’m so glad to hear that Gary! Thanks for letting me know!
When I buy lettuce at the store it is sometimes wet from mist or spray the store uses to ‘keep veggies fresh’. Any ideas to keep this lettuce fresh?
Hi Kim! You can follow these directions, just dry the lettuce first. I do this with a dish towel or paper towel. Just gentle press the lettuce leaves to remove the excess water, then continue with the rest of the directions.
Great question!
To keep lettuce, bacon, deli meats, anything fresh for much, much longer, use those cereal bags we always threw out! They have a preservative in them…its food safe if course, it kept your cereal crisp! Remove bacon from its icky 0lastic, give the whole thing a good rinse (don’t separate the bacon, just rinse any goop off from the bag it came in), wrap in a paper towel and place into a cereal bag. Fresh bacon, always! Same for deli meats, etc. For lettuce, wash as you usually do, give it a good shake, place in a cereal bag…fresh, crisp lettuce for well over a week! No buying green coloured bags that likely use the same preservatives in them…cereal bags are free! Try it…you’ll be shocked at the results! :)
That’s really interesting! I bet you’re right that it works well! We don’t buy cereal often (if ever, due to allergies), but it’s good to know if we ever do again!
Thanks will save a lot of money