Why You Should Use Your Hands To Mix And Serve Salad

Whether you are enjoying a basic yet delicious Caesar salad or a complex salad mix of apples and celery with toasted walnuts, you might be mixing it all wrong. You don't need a pair of tongs or extra large forks to toss your salad together. In fact, the best way to incorporate all your ingredients is to simply use your hands. We know it might be a bit of a controversial take, but hear us out.

Gadgets like tongs can easily bruise the greens in your salad, leaving them wilted and slightly bitter. Certain additions like dressing and soft cheeses may also stick to the tongs, leaving less food for you to enjoy and more mess to clean up. Mixing the salad with your hands ensures you get the proper amount of gentle tossing, aerating the salad in the process, which will result in an even mixture of dressing, toppings, and greens. Plating the finished product with your hands will also ensure that you get an equal amount of all the salad elements.

It goes without saying that before you mix and plate your salad with your hands, be sure to wash them thoroughly. You don't want to make a meal prep mistake that could lead to food poisoning after all. To avoid this, you can also try single use food-safe gloves. This will still allow you to thoroughly handle your salad without worry about any transfer of germs. Once you are willing to try this unconventional yet rather convenient way of handling your salad, you may never go back.

After you have properly mixed and served your salad with your hands, why not commit fully and eat it with your hands, too? It may sound silly, but there are plenty of real reasons to pick at your leafy lunch without a fork. Historically speaking, there was a time when salads were enjoyed without a utensil in sight. Salads date back to the times of ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans. While there were spoons and knives available to use, people ate most food items with their hands. Utensil-style forks were not invented until centuries later. So, if our ancestors did it, why can't we?

Even with utensils now readily available, handling food with your hands is still very much a popular thing — salads just don't happen to be on the list of pre-approved finger foods. But when you think about it, there are so many different components to a salad that come in various sizes and textures, and not all of those toppings are fork-friendly. Accoutrements like seeds, dried fruits, and even small crumbles of cheese often pool at the bottom of a salad bowl because they are hard to balance on a fork each time you build a bite. 

With your hands, you could easily stack all the elements of your salad using hearty greens as a base, crafting the perfect bite every time. You could even dip your lettuce into dressing, chips-and-dip style, having full control over the ratio of each bite.