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The Surprising Kitchen Appliance That Can Help Keep Salad Greens Fresh

In terms of grossness, the slime you might find in your bagged salad is second only to the container of green silly slime in your kid's toy box. Unfortunately, overripe salad is an eventuality that most produce lovers face, and while it's possible to mitigate this issue by picking out the gooey lettuce leaves, it's sometimes an uphill battle. Fortunately, there are options. After you've enjoyed your ice-treated bagged salad mix, you can introduce the CO2 gas used to carbonate water in personal soda makers like the SodaStream Terra Sparkling Water Maker to extend its life.

This trick is fairly straightforward, as you're just filling a zip-top bag with CO2 using the soda maker. In a bag that already contains salad mix, make a small opening at the top and stick the nozzle of the soda maker through it. Then, close the opening as much as you can with your hand, creating a seal around the nozzle. Finally, start filling the bag with CO2 from the soda maker, making sure to keep that seal tight to prevent the gas from escaping. 

Once the bag is partially full, seal and refrigerate it. By going through the trouble of this kind of quick salad prep and using CO2, you're extending the life of your salad by three or four days. This allows you to keep salad fresh in the fridge for up to nine days instead of only five because the CO2 gases slow down the decaying process.

Helpful tips for using CO2 to preserve salad

Before your salad gets the CO2 treatment, it's important that you've removed produce that's already turning slimy and emptied out as much air as possible. Typically, you can push on the sides of the bag to release the air. Be mindful not to crunch the leaves into little bits as you work the air out of the bag. Also, any salad you intend to preserve with this method should be thoroughly dried.

If you don't have access to a soda maker, you're not completely out of luck. Your lungs are your own portable CO2 maker. All you need to do is blow into the bag until it fills up with the expelled CO2 from your lungs and then seal it off and refrigerate as usual. Obviously, you may not want to share this salad with anyone else in your household, but if you live by yourself, this levels up your salad game in a pinch.

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