Some Good Alternatives For Iceberg Lettuce

Salads are just mostly mixes of various fixings that complement each other and taste great in the end, but most of the time, recipes for salad start with crisp, green lettuce. This time, we won’t be dealing with lettuce alternatives since in reality, people really love their little salad greens. Instead, we’re going to check out the different types of lettuce you can use to make perfect salads for your family and friends.

It takes a little bit of time to make the perfect salad. You start with the bottom base and you work your way up including all the fixings to make it taste just right. Considering this, lettuce is not the only ingredient that builds up your salad but constitutes about fifty to sixty percent in most salad recipes. With this in mind, finding the right type of lettuce is very important for any scrutinizing taste bud.

The most common type of lettuce is the Iceberg lettuce and coincidently, it is mostly the main ingredient of restaurant and home-made salads. One thing familiar about Iceberg lettuce is it has very little taste. But even with this trait, it is still considered as one of the favorite picks in every recipe for salad. A good hypothesis would be because of the other fixings and dressings we put on our salads; we fail to notice that this kind of lettuce doesn’t add much taste to the dish.

Bibb lettuce is probably the next most used salad base mainly because of its slightly sweet taste. It is visually appealing too with its rich green color adding vibrancy to the dish. Bibb lettuce partners great as base bedding for fruit salads as well as meat-based tuna or chicken salads.

If you are going to make Caesar salads, consider using Romaine lettuce on your recipe. Unfortunately, it’s a little more expensive than the common Iceberg lettuce but its mild taste makes it perfect on any recipe for salad. This kind of lettuce has a darker color than your common lettuce. Each Romaine lettuce leaf has a fibrous spine that runs its entire length and its long leaves add for a satisfying chew.

Frisee lettuce is mostly associated with mixed greens recipe for salad. This type of lettuce is mostly mixed with Mesclun lettuce. The distinction for these types is that they are both bitter in taste. These have a distinguishable leaf shape that looks like they are bitten by an animal before packaged for human consumption. The ragged looking leaves are long and are medium green in color.

One very healthy vegetable you can try with any salad is Spinach. No wonder why Popeye loves this vegetable so much since Spinach has a flavorful taste and a brilliant dark green color which is also its greatest benefit to the human body. In these darker color leaves, antioxidants are very much abundant. With antioxidants, you’ll also receive a generous amount of beta carotene, helping to free your body of harmful free radicals.

A kind of lettuce that can also confuse or surprise the unwary eater is the Radicchio. Radicchio is a lettuce type that looks more like a cabbage. One obvious distinction would be that its leaves are long, but in case of color and texture, it is definitely more cabbage-like. For example, the leaves have a white spine that runs through its entirety. Also, its purple or red color produces a cabbage appearance unlike any other lettuce. In terms of taste though, you’re better off adding Radicchio with other types of lettuce since it has a distinct bitter taste which can be unsavory if eaten alone.

Endive is a Belgian variety of lettuce that has a dark green color but unlike other lettuce types, its leaves are short and have a tendency to curl up for that added effect. It has a mild taste and is very much used on many salad offerings.

These are just a few of the many greens you can mix and match with any recipe for salad. Try creating a salad base coming from these lettuce types next time or if you’re the adventurous type, try exploring other greens too. You just might find one you’ll love to eat and share with your peers.

Read more articles by: Letty Velasco