1,550 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

Toss the salad

When you've finished preparing a salad, green or otherwise, it's usually time to add the dressing and toss.
It's often said to "toss the salad", which means to season and mix.

Is it easy? Not so easy...

12 K 5/5 (2 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Tips Tricks Salad Dressing Mixing Cutlery Hands

Last modified on: March 8^th 2024

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Toss the salad

Imagine, your salad bowl is well filled, almost full, with the delicious salad you've just prepared, and you're about to sit down to dinner, so you need to add the dressing, and above all mix it well so that all the dressing is evenly distributed over the salad.

So what's the problem? you might be thinking, just pour in the dressing and toss.

tourner une salade avec des couverts

In principle, of course, there's nothing revolutionary about it, but in practice, it's not so easy, especially if you have large pieces in your salad, for example a green salad with its leaves whole, not cut into chiffonade.

Pouring the dressing over it is no problem, but mixing it is not so easy. Naturally, you use your (salad) cutlery and try to do the best you can to mix it.
There's no secret about it, though: there's a big risk of getting a lot of sauce on the side (especially if the salad bowl is quite full), and it's very easy to get a few drops of sauce on your clothes.
When we were kids, my grandmother used to let us toss the salad, and we loved it. When we succeeded, she'd take one look at the contents of the salad bowl and say "You're ready for your wedding!" Maybe yours is too?

But let's face it, this cutlery method isn't very efficient, nor very quick, so how can we do it any other way?

Let's take a look at what's done in restaurants: they make all kinds of salads, and how do they turn them?

tourner salade à la main

It's both simple and ultra-efficient: they pour the dressing over the salad, often in a high-sided container, and then a cook stirs the whole thing with his or her hands, often gloved, which takes a few seconds for a perfectly turned salad, which is then arranged on the serving plates.

It's as simple as I said, you just don't have to be afraid of getting your hands "sauced".

To sum up: to turn a salad quickly and efficiently, it's best to go at it with both hands.

Lasts posts

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20252,1945

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20251,4585

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 20251,343

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20254,1515

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 20258,5053

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Soup vs. potage

It's true that we're finally coming out of winter as I write these lines, and that we'll all be making, no doubt, a little less soup and potages, but even if it's out of season, it really is a simple and delicious dish, which is one of the always easy answers to "What's for dinner this (Sunday)...
April 9^th 202211 K

Fruits which can ruin your jelly

There are many ways of making a fruit mousse, but one of the simplest is to prepare a fruit jelly (basically a fresh fruit coulis with gelatine) and then mix this jelly before it sets completely with whipped cream. The result is perfect for filling a charlotte, for example. But do beware;...
March 6^th 201379 K4.0

The window-pane test in bread-making

The home bread-makers often ask themselves “Have I kneaded my dough long enough?” . A good question, as dough that is insufficiently kneaded will not rise properly or will fall flat when the top is slashed, which is very frustrating. To know when the dough is ready, one can rely on the length...
June 16^th 202197 K 23.9

What is the difference between bakery and patisserie?

This is a question that you may well have asked yourself and which I will attempt to answer. In France the two trades of "boulangerie" (bakery) and "pâtisserie" (patisserie and confectionery) have always been quite distinct, but where exactly do the boundaries lie? .
February 7^th 2017135 K 14.1

Candied fruits: don't get ripped off

Do you like candied fruit? You might like to nibble a handful or add it to a recipe, like a classic fruit cake or delicious Italian specialities like panettone or sicilian epiphany pie.
June 21^th 201769 K 24.2