How to Make Great Salads at Home

Have you ever wondered how to make salads just like you get from restaurants? There are a few tricks to it, but the basic idea is to make a base mix and then build your different styles of salad on top of the mix. The key seems to be to cut the lettuce up adequately. Another basic is to pay attention to the appearance of the salad. Presentation is everything!

The following Basic Salad Mix recipe will make enough mix to make at least eight large salads. The mix seems to go bad after a few days even if stored well.

Basic Salad Mix

Ingredients:

1 Large Head of Romaine
1/2 of a Red Cabbage, Shredded
4.5 oz Baby Spinach Leaves (Normally one-half of a bag)
1 Cup of Shredded Carrots

Directions:

Be sure to wash all produce before starting. There's nothing worse than getting a mouth full of dirt after taking a bite of a salad. Start by cutting the head of romaine. The following illustration shows one method to cut romain lettuce into small pieces. Note that the first picture only depicts one cut, but you need to make more than one lengthwise cut like this. Two cuts are minimal, and four cuts are better. Once the lengthwise cuts are made, start at the end and slice until you reach the stem.

Next, chop up the red cabbage. First remove the stem. Cut the cabbage in half right down the center. Lay one half of the cabbage down flat on a cutting board and cut it in slices. Save the other half for your other recipes. Keep the slices together. To finish it cut about three more slices in the opposite direction.

Once you have shredded the cabbage, add the rest of the ingredients to your container. Combine ingredients one at a time to mix thoroughly.

Simply store this mix in a large Tupperware container in the refrigerator. Now that you have the mix, you can begin assembling the toppings for different types of salads.

It is extremely helpful to have a digital kitchen scale that measures in grams and ounces to weigh the salad mix for the salads. That way, you can keep your salads consistent, and later tune the above ingredients to your personal taste.

For toppings, try these salads: