The best approach to core iceberg lettuce is to firmly whack the top, core facet down, towards the kitchen counter. The power dislocates the core from the tight leaf construction, and, with a fast twist, it pops proper out.
America’s relationship with iceberg lettuce might have as soon as been this straightforward—and satisfying—however in recent times, iceberg’s status has wilted underneath dietary and environmental scrutiny. Alternatively, iceberg recipes proceed to pop up on-line and in cookbooks; they’re handed down, swapped, and treasured. And sooner or later, iceberg lettuce grew to become a signifier of style, class, and values: poor for some, but irreplaceable for others.
The cultivar was launched in 1894 by the W. Atlee Burpee Firm. Its compact, hardy head allowed California growers to ship iceberg lettuce throughout the nation, first packed in ice after which in refrigerated rail vehicles. (Whereas most sources attribute the lettuce’s identify to its icy transport methodology, the identify pre-dates iceberg’s industrial success. The extra seemingly inspiration: the lettuce’s “ice-white shade and crunchy texture.”)
By the Nineteen Thirties, simply as grocery chains started to proliferate and the primary mass-produced fridges had been put in in American properties, California-grown iceberg grew to become America’s de facto lettuce. By the point Steve Henson began promoting Hidden Valley Ranch within the mid Fifties, Individuals had been consuming 14 kilos of lettuce (not solely iceberg, however it dominated the class) per capita yearly, up from simply over 4 kilos in 1919.
“Iceberg was a part of this new system that allowed for a shift away from native meals manufacturing to what we’ve got now. It’s a captivating piece of the puzzle,” says Twilight Greenaway, who covers meals and farming because the senior editor of Civil Eats.
Iceberg match neatly into the nation’s more and more industrialized meals system. It’s grown in huge monocultures that wreck the soil and require all kinds of chemical compounds to assist a sturdy harvest. Iceberg heads are 96 p.c water by quantity, and the crop wants in depth irrigation, typically from imperiled water sources, in addition to fixed refrigeration after it’s harvested.
“There’s a lot waste constructed into the system,” says Greenaway. “Lettuce within the area is 2 to a few occasions the dimensions of what you get in a retailer. Employees [picking alongside specialized trucks] attain into the middle, pull out the top, and bundle it on the truck…If you happen to drive by these fields within the Salinas Valley, the place they’ve minimize lettuce, there are these huge remaining piles of lettuce waste. Possibly 1 / 4 of what’s grown will get eaten.”
Compounding iceberg’s environmental affect is the truth that it’s not particularly nutritious. (Neither are cucumbers, however I’ve but to see a take-down of the pickle business.) Throw within the occasional E. coli scare and romaine’s decades-long creep to main lettuce standing, and it could appear iceberg’s demise is imminent. Maybe iceberg’s worst sin, although, is that it’s boring: the pale inexperienced filler of salad bars, hospital trays, and uninspired weeknight meals.
In 2018, the author Helen Rosner got here to iceberg’s protection in The New Yorker, countering meals snobs and a storied record of haters (amongst them Craig Claiborne and Alice Waters) and advocating for its place within the gourmand’s fridge. Certainly, tens of millions of Individuals proceed to sign their approval for iceberg. Even after the arrival of bagged leaf lettuce salads in early 90s, the inauguration of an arugula-loving president in 2008, and the tough-love kale salad years, iceberg stays some of the consumed lettuce varieties within the nation. Simply final 12 months, growers in California, Arizona, and Florida produced practically 2.25 billion kilos of the stuff.
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My Grandma Joanne grew up just some miles from iceberg lettuce farms in Belle Glade, Florida, a city in western Palm Seaside County, the place farmers nonetheless develop lettuce from September by means of Might. As a child, Joanne’s household ate easy iceberg salads extra nights than not, and it nonetheless holds courtroom in her kitchen.
This winter, Joanne confirmed me how you can make a slaw-like salad with iceberg, a diced Florida avocado (that may have as soon as come from my great-grandmother’s yard), candy onion, mayonnaise, a lot of black pepper, and crimson wine vinegar. One other perennial household favourite is the Cuban-American “1905” Salad from the Columbia Restaurant (so well-liked that the restaurant made the identify a registered trademark) through which ham, Swiss cheese, olives, tomato, celery, and a garlicky oregano French dressing mingle with the crunchy lettuce. In these salads, iceberg’s watery crunch works as a palate cleanser, bulldozing by means of the fats and pungent flavors.
“Within the salad world, it’s paired with extremely flavorful, strong dressings.” says Carla Lalli Music, cookbook writer and the host of Carla’s Cooking Present on Patreon. “In an Italian salad with pickled peppers, crimson onion, and perhaps cubes of salami and provolone, there’s a lot salty, punchy, and even sharp taste. It’s the identical with extremely wealthy, funky, creamy blue cheese dressing. Iceberg is a foil for all these actually flavorful additions. It’s an vital counterbalance.”
Lalli Music grew up iceberg-neutral, principally consuming it crammed into Subway cold-cut sandwiches. Afterward she fell for wedge salads, which got here again into vogue within the late aughts due to an iceberg business advertising and marketing marketing campaign. However on a analysis journey whereas working as Shake Shack’s first common supervisor, she visited Pie ’N Burger in Pasadena and “watched a burger cook dinner take a slab of iceberg, flatten it together with his hand, and put it on a burger. It was revelatory,” she says. “Since then, that’s what I need on a burger.”
The iceberg slab stands as much as sizzling sandwich purposes, the place shredded or leaf lettuce wilts into “wettuce,” as Lalli Music explains in a current fried fish sandwich video. Kale, butter lettuce, and mesclun simply can’t compete with iceberg’s crunch. “It’s one of many nice textures,” she says.
“There’s no explicit prejudice towards iceberg lettuce in Chinese language-American delicacies,” says Tienlon Ho, coauthor of Mr. Jiu’s in Chinatown, a cookbook that weaves collectively Chinese language-Amerian historical past with tales and recipes from Chef Brandon Jew’s San Francisco restaurant. “Texture and mouthfeel are as a lot a part of stability as visible cues, taste, and aroma.”
Stir-fried lettuce is among the many best-known iceberg preparations within the Chinese language-American culinary canon, however “the poster baby for iceberg is minced squab or duck served in a lettuce cup,” says Ho. The dish comes from a swirl of influences: tiki eating places and the Cantonese-American cooks who staffed them, American GIs coming back from the Pacific entrance, Fifties hors d’oeuvre tendencies, and an ongoing change between Hawaiian and Chinese language cultures. “It’s the right amalgam of Chinese language-Individuals experimenting, taking part in on the thought of what Pacific delicacies was like and what they might truly eat,” says Ho.
Mr. Jiu’s in Chinatown features a recipe for squab in lettuce cups, although not iceberg. As a chef, Brandon was “making an attempt to pack in additional taste. He ended up utilizing uncooked radicchio. It’s that very same thought of crisp freshness,” says Ho.
Like Jew, loads of Individuals have diversified their greens consumption, if not fairly abandoning iceberg. My mother and father develop romaine and arugula; a lot of the greens I purchase—collards, Swiss chard, watercress, French crisp, spinach, and sorrel, to call a couple of—come from New York’s Union Sq. Greenmarket. However we nonetheless purchase iceberg from the grocery store a couple of occasions a 12 months, with goal and maybe a bit of nostalgia.
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“What else are you gonna put in a taco? It’s gotta be iceberg,” says Caitlin Daniel, a sociologist at College of California, Berkeley, whose analysis focuses on class, equality, household life, and consumption. Daniel grew up in Minnesota in a low-income household, and she or he and her sisters have a comfortable spot for iceberg, which, at round a greenback a head, was a mainstay for them. Daniel’s work investigates the that means individuals deliver to meals, together with how low-income households interpret the price of groceries primarily based on elements like want, diet, meals waste, cultural preferences, and purchasing habits. Whereas iceberg isn’t formally a part of her analysis, I hoped Daniel may illuminate among the methods iceberg’s price ticket contributes to its endurance.
By surveying low-income households and observing their grocery journeys, Daniel discovered that when cash is tight, households keep away from shopping for extremely perishable produce (many tender lettuces go limp after even a couple of days); additionally they are inclined to make one large purchasing journey a month, typically touring miles to the most cost effective grocery store. “If you happen to do need one thing that may final, iceberg isn’t a nasty guess,” she says. “It is going to nonetheless be edible after two weeks.”
Daniel has additionally discovered that many low-income households seem much less involved with nutrient density than a salad’s function within the prototypical trio of meat, starch, and greens. Iceberg satisfies a culturally outlined class, even when (pricier) spinach and kale are more healthy.
There’s financial motivation to stay with what’s acquainted, too. “One factor that comes by means of clearly with low-income mother and father is their reluctance to experiment with one thing unfamiliar,” she says. “There’s this concept that they’re extra culturally conservative or by some means averse to arugula, prefer it’s simply past them. Or it’s too bougie,” noticed Daniel. “Experimentation takes financial freedom, freedom to waste cash on one thing you may not like.”
In the end, Individuals eat iceberg as a result of a lot of of us, in all earnings brackets, truly prefer it—to not point out all of the creamy, salty, juicy components it may be paired with—and for all kinds of causes. Issues like diet, novelty, and taste are relative values; lettuce waste seems totally different within the area than it does within the fridge or uneaten on a plate. Actually, the one uncomplicated factor about iceberg lettuce is getting ready it.