Salad Green Prep & Storage Tips

One of the biggest challenges that I hear on a daily basis is how time consuming it is to prepare fresh salads for both lunch and dinner each day. Washing and cleaning your favorite super healthy green can be a taxing task to complete each day. But, I’m here to share how I prep and store my greens for the week.

I personally do this with kale, as it is my favorite salad green, but the steps and tools are the same. Other great salad greens include: spinach, arugula, spring mix and romaine lettuce. Some of these salad leaves are more delicate and tend to go bad faster than the thicker kales leaves. I will say that baby spinach tends to go bad the quickest…the hardier the green, the longer it will stay fresh after you wash and store it.

This salad green prep method makes preparation for lunch and/or dinner salads, green smoothies and soups a snap because the greens are already clean and all I have to do is add: onion, carrot, tomato, etc. – and, I’m ready to eat!

Kitchen Items Needed

Large storage bin and a salad spinner

*you can buy both on amazon or at target

Steps for Salad Green Prep & Storage

1. Place kale in a large colander. Peel the leaves off of the stalks.

2. Rinse thoroughly. Most kale has a little dirt stuck in the leaves…but, a quick rinse takes it right off

3. Spin to drain excess water. (I use an OXO Salad Spinner). I usually have to do 2 or 3 passes through the spinner.

4. Chop or tear leaves into bite size salad pieces. Store kale in a large, air-tight sealed storage container.

Grab by the handfuls when ready to use. Enjoy in salads, soups, smoothies, juices, etc. etc.

Some salad greens are great to use in healthy smoothies where you can add fruits to give more flavor.

* I like to buy about 4 heads of kale varieties from on Saturday from a Jacksonville farmers market, wash/prep on Sunday and store for use throughout entire week to pull from and it’s already ready to go – no extra fuss!