Spice up your salad from boring to delicious

In the US, most lettuce varieties can be grouped into four types: the butterheads, the crisp heads (icebergs), the leaf lettuces, and the romaine lettuce. You are probably most familiar with iceberg head lettuces which are large and compact. They have little flavor and few nutrients. You could do your body more good by simply drinking a glass of water. The head lettuce always went bad before I could eat it all anyway.

Butterheads have small, round, loose heads with pale green, sweet-tasting leaves. You see them in the store like Bibb or Boston. They are one step ahead of the iceberg in that they have more flavor. Romaine lettuce is also very popular. It is oblong in shape with dark green outer leaves that lighten as you move towards the center. Romaine lettuce is used for Caesar salads and is crunchy. It has a slightly bitter taste. Mustard, lemon juice, and black pepper are all good spices to use with a Caesar salad.

Perhaps my favorites, especially since I can grow them in my garden, are leaf lettuces. As you can tell from their name, they are not as compact as the others and usually come from a single stem in a variety of shapes. They are darker green or red in color, have more vitamins and flavor, and can go bad faster than lettuce, so buy them the same day you want to use them. Better yet, grow them in your garden and simply pick them, along with your tomatoes and peppers, when you need them for your salads.

The term green refers to the leaves of edible plants. Some of the most common are radicchio (curly endive), collards, dandelions, mustards, and turnips. All of them are rich in nutrients and easy to handle. You can simmer them for ten minutes, steam them, or eat them raw.

One of the ways to spice up a salad is to add a spicy green to it. For example, arugula or mustard greens have a pungent, slightly bitter flavor and can be combined with something sweet, such as raisins or cranberries in a salad. Who doesn’t have dandelions in their garden? Use the leaves for your salad, but pick them before the dandelions bloom. If you find endive too bitter, try endive instead. It belongs to the same family, but the leaves are wide and pale green and the taste is not so bitter. If you use turnip greens, keep in mind that the younger, smaller ones tend to have a sweeter flavor.

For any green salad, including spinach, use some of the spices you bought for that recipe. What was new? Marjoram, tarragon, and thyme are good choices, along with herbs like chervil and chives. For spinach-based salads, try anise, caraway seeds, dill, mace, nutmeg, oregano, or rosemary. It seems to be able to handle a variety, but don’t try them all at once. Basil or mint also work well in a mixed green salad. Don’t forget the nuts. It adds a nice crunch of its own, and it has good cholesterol and amino acids. For the best flavor, you can’t go wrong with bacon dressing on your spinach salad.

If you really want to be smart, find out what the cook is using for their barbecue sauce and try incorporating some of the same or contrasting spices into your salad (sweet with hot or salty with sweet, for example). Remember to finely chop fresh herbs to release more flavor. Use a full teaspoon of fresh herbs or a quarter teaspoon of dried or ground spices for every two servings (or every pound) until you are more familiar with their overall effect. Salads no longer have to be bland and boring. Spice it up and don’t let the grill master get all the praise!