Why You Need To Keep Your Lettuce Away From The Freezer

When you hear lettuce, you likely picture a snappy, verdant leaf that brings a fresh crunch to a meal. While you'll find instances of cooked lettuce in Asian and especially Chinese cuisine, most Western dishes use it raw. And if that raw lettuce isn't crisp, it lets down the entire meal, especially one like a salad where lettuce is a main ingredient. In a burger, soggy lettuce quickly turns slimy when subjected to the heat of the patty. 

Try to freeze it and even the freshest lettuce leaf will turn to mush. The reason it can't stand up to extreme hot or cold temperatures is because lettuce is about 95% water. Freezing creates ice crystals that burst cell walls in the lettuce, irreversibly changing the leaf's texture, which is why the freezer is simply not the place to store lettuce.

While you can keep most salad greens fresh by wrapping them in paper towels, lettuce requires slightly more careful handling. It also needs to be kept airtight to ensure it doesn't dry out. To get some tips on how best to store lettuce so it doesn't wilt, we reached out to Patrick Ochs, Corporate Executive Chef for INK Entertainment. "Some vegetables don't freeze well after blanching due to changes in texture or flavor," he notes. "Leafy greens like lettuce or high-water content vegetables like cucumbers tend to become limp, soggy, or mushy after freezing, making them poor options for freezing."

While some green vegetables, like Brussels sprouts, can be frozen and thawed without getting soggy, the same is not true for lettuce and a few other veggies as well. At low temperatures, the water inside these greens turns into texture-destroying ice crystals. Vegetables that have more starch and a lower proportion of water, like peas, hold up relatively well when frozen.

Lettuce also doesn't respond well to external moisture, so if you plan on washing it before storage, make sure to dry it thoroughly. When it comes to keeping lettuce fresh in the fridge for several days, Ochs says that "The best way to store lettuce is by keeping it in the refrigerator in a crisper drawer, wrapped in a damp paper towel, and placed inside a plastic bag or container to maintain its freshness and prevent wilting." 

However, if you need to keep it for only a day or two, you can simply store it in a plastic bag. Therefore, if you've got a store-bought salad that you'd like to eat the next day, you're probably safe to put it as-is in your fridge's crisper drawer. To save on cleaning and to make a quick and convenient meal, try the bagged salad hack and enjoy the crispy lettuce as a reward for keeping it away from the freezer.