For A Better Tossed Salad, Stop Using Tongs And Do This Instead

I'm a professional salad eater and salad server — I eat a salad almost every day and if you come to my house for dinner, you can expect a massive salad on the table. However, I don't use salad tongs. Instead, I rely on the best tool possible to have in the kitchen: two bare, obsessively clean hands. Our hands are the ultimate gadgets because we control the pressure applied when kneading or mixing something, and can feel for the right textures and consistencies. 

When mixing salad, salad tongs often cause more harm than good. Using salad tongs made from a hard material to repeatedly grip delicate greens like butter lettuce or arugula damages their structure, while ingredients like sliced tomatoes or avocado chunks also lose their shape. Not to mention, even when you add the perfect salad dressing for your greens, it won't be long until you have a sad, soggy salad. With our hands, we can also evenly distribute the salad's ingredients or cherry-pick where to place certain contents for presentation.

To hand-toss a salad, ensure your hands are thoroughly washed and dried, regardless of whether you plan to use food-grade gloves. Assemble all the salad components in an appropriately sized bowl with ample space for mixing. Begin by pouring a small amount of dressing over the surface. Gently grasp the salad from the edges with your fingers, and use a folding motion to evenly distribute the ingredients, adding more dressing as needed to lightly glaze each leaf and veggie. 

Different types of kale, cabbage, chard, and other hardier greens also benefit from two hands instead of salad tongs since these types of greens prefer to be massaged. Tongs aren't very efficient at the simultaneous rubbing and kneading motion that's needed to tenderize these sturdy, raw greens. To toss these types of greens with your hands, start off with a small amount of dressing, followed by squeezing a handful of the leaves at a time to massage the dressing into them. This helps break down the cell walls of the leaves, and softens them. Once the greens are evenly coated with the dressing and the overall volume has slightly decreased, use your fingertips to gently fold in any other components to the salad.

But salads don't have to contain lettuce to be tossed with your hands. In fact, lettuce-less salads may even be more vulnerable to damage from tongs since they don't have greens that can act as a barrier between other ingredients. Gripping fruit salad that's filled with both soft and juicy textures with salad tongs could turn into a mushy mess, and the same is true for potato salad that's meant to have hearty chunks of potato in it.   

By ditching the tongs and embracing your hands, you're not only preserving the integrity of every ingredient, but also crafting a salad that looks aesthetically pleasing and appetizing. Sure, tongs have their place — for plating, perhaps — but the tools already attached to your arms are the true secret to a better tossed salad.