As you probably know, cooking is not my favorite thing any time of year but in the summer the last thing I want to do is heat the house up while cooking dinner.
Bagged salads to the rescue. My favorite thing to do is cook a bunch of chicken, chop it up and freeze it to use later in salad. I sometimes do this on the grill if the house feels too hot. You can marinate the chicken or season it anyway you like to add some zip to your salad.
Recently it seems that every week there is a bagged salad recall. It seems that bacteria is especially hard to remove from lettuce leaves, even though most bagged salads are triple washed.
The best solution of course, is chopping your own lettuce and vegetables for a salad but for most of us in time crunch it just doesn’t work out.
There are some things you can do to make your bagged salad safer. First, buy one with an expiration date as far away as possible and eat it in a few days. The longer the salad sits at the store or in your refrigerator the more the bacteria increase. Of course it goes without saying to always keep salads refrigerated.
Make sure your hands and the surfaces in your kitchen are clean when you make your salad. Do not let your salad any where near raw meat.
You can wash the greens with a vegetable wash which will remove dirt, oil and pesticide residues but will not kill bacteria.
I think for most people, with proper handling, bagged salads are safe. For the very young, the very old or people who are ill I would err on the side of caution and use all fresh vegetables. If you can get them out of your own garden, even better.