Dealing with Lettuce

As I mentioned yesterday I am currently dealing with an over abundance of lettuce. As in I'm not done harvesting but I've gotten two Large plastic shopping bags full of the stuff. That is... considerably more than my husband and I can eat fresh. I managed to offload about half of it to my neighbors two doors down, along with a cucumber and a jar of pickles, as a thank you for unexpectedly mowing my front lawn yesterday. It was getting really long, my husband hadn't gotten around to it, I hate dealing with the getting the gate open to get the mower out. But Awesome Neighbor noticed and just mowed it for us. Didn't even take credit, we had to wander over to his place and ask if he'd done it before we found out who our mystery mower was. So he and his wife got garden produce.

But that still leaves me with A Lot of Lettuce. I scoured the internet for ANY lettuce preservation method. Lettuce is a delicate and testy thing. It is mostly water, so freezing it ends with mushy, slimy, black sludge. Not Appetizing. It doesn't stand up well to high heat, so canning it is Right Out. Fresh lettuce only stays that way in a fridge for about a week.

There had to be something I could do (other than toss it on the compost pile and shrug).

It is here that I discovered lacto-fermented pickled lettuce. Apparently pickled lettuce is a popular condiment/relish-thing in South East Asian cooking. I figured since you could buy jars of the stuff off the internet there had to be a way to do it at home. Seems logical right? I found a simple enough recipe and decided to try it with half of my remaining lettuce. That way if it failed I didn't ruin ALL of what I had harvested, but if it worked I could use all my lettuce before it goes bad.

Disclaimer! This is the recipe I am currently using! I can not attest to it being tasty or working. I'm still in the 'this is fermenting' stage of things. There will be another report when I taste it.

Pickled Lettuce/Psudo-kraut

You need:

A big, deep bowl
A smaller bowl
Plastic wrap
things to weigh the smaller bowl down with
Lettuce. An inadvisable amount of lettuce
sea salt
water.

Wash you lettuce carefully, leaf by leaf. Layer your leaves in the large bowl, alternating with a layer of sprinkled sea salt. Don't be stingy with the salt. I'm talking about a teaspoon between each layer. When your bowl is 3/4 full stop adding more things to it. Put a layer of plastic wrap loosely overtop. The plastic wrap is only to help keep your smaller bowl from touching the top of the lettuce and to keep bugs out. Put your smaller bowl on top of your bigger bowl. Add weight until your lettuce is being squashed.

The next day:

Check it. If your lettuce has had enough water squashed out of it that it's sitting in brine? Excellent! Leave it alone for a few days, then put it in a jar and leave it in your fridge. If it isn't covered in brine add water until it is, then leave it for a few days, put it in a jar, and let it live in your fridge.

This (in theory) should last as long as refrigerator pickles (so a month or so). The longer you leave it the more intense the flavor gets but the softer your lettuce is.