how to make salad greens last 5 days longer

Damn and bless Cook's Illustrated.  They came out with something really cool this month, but you have to be a paying member to get it from their web site, so I have to type it all out in order to share it with you.

They tested a theory that exhaling into a bag of salad greens would extend the life of the greens a while back. And it did, by about 5 extra days, but they were icked out by the idea of exhaling into food. So this month someone asked if you couldn't create CO2 (which was what preserved the greens) with vinegar and baking soda.  And they totally did.  They froze 1 teaspoon of white vinegar, and sprinkled 1 tsp of baking soda on top of the frozen vinegar in a small jar.  They put a paper towel on top fastened with a rubber band, and put this whole thing in a bag of greens.  It extended the life of the greens by nearly a week, as long as the bag was kept sealed (if the bag is opened you have to start all over again).

I'm totally putting a little jar of this in my salad green clamshells in the future if it's going to be a while before I can get to them. (like maybe open the second of two and put this in there while I'm working on the first container.)


OOH!  Also, they taste-tested different brands of whole chickens. Their top recommended was Bell & Evans, which Albert's has but we've never ordered (we get their breaded nuggets and tenders).  But Coleman Organic was right under that, which we do get.  (the other top brand was Mary's, but it's a brand out in the California/Oregon area)

They also rated Bell & Evans as the ONLY boneless breast that they'd recommend of 8 brands tested (they didn't list the other brands).  Apparently the biggest factor in taste and texture is air-chilling (rather than mass water-chilling in a chlorinated bath), but what Bell & Evans does is to air chill for a full 12 hours before removing bones or skin.  Apparently this improves the texture as the muscle continues to relax naturally.  Other brands speed this up using electrical pulses.  Anyway, we may have to look into Bell & Evans chicken from Albert's soon.

AND they tested blenders this  month Vitamix won. With Breville a close second and $200 cheaper.  (Ninja was 3rd, and $100 cheaper than the Breville)

Cook's Illustrated is a very cool magazine, by the way.  (But don't count on ever being able to get anything from their web site without paying!  I guess that's because they don't take advertising, which is good for a magazine that tests and reviews stuff, so I'll live with that.)