Choosing Lettuce for Salads: Different Varieties & What They’re Good For

I often enjoy salads, but in the summer, I find them especially refreshing.

One important thing to consider when making a good salad is the lettuce or greens that form your base. Sure, most people know iceberg lettuce and romaine lettuce as well as recently faddish salad greens like mesclun mix or arugula, but what’s exciting to me is how many varieties of actual lettuce (and the wide variety of flavors and textures) are now becoming widely available in your local market (the organic buttercrunch I just had for dinner came from Costco!), so here’s a quick primer:

Soft: Bibb, Boston, and Buttercrunch
All three of these varieties are softer types of lettuce, making them good for lettuce wraps of all kinds. If you like Korean grilled meats, you’ll know that they’re often served with lettuce for wrapping à la burrito. Spring rolls in Vietnamese cuisine are also often served with lettuce for wrapping around them. In both cases, a nice, flexible lettuce is ideal. Note: With smaller (younger) heads of any of these varieties, you’ll find a crunchier core, which can be nice for contrast in a salad (like the one above). One small head makes just enough salad for an appetizer for 2.

Crunchier: French Crisp, Romaine
With more structure than the soft varieties, these more elongated varieties of lettuce have a nice crunch and texture, but more flavor than the crisp head varieties like Iceberg. You’ll find than many have a light nuttiness to them.

Crunchiest: Iceberg, Salad, Crispsalat
With an almost cabbage-like shape, these heads of lettuce have the most water content (and least calories) of the varieties, but I find that they also tend to be the mildest in flavor. These are good for those guests who don’t love the taste of greens, but if you’re like me and like your food to pack a punch without a lot of dressing up (or just dressing), then you may want to consider some of the varieties described above. I will say that these do slice nicely for a wedge on top of a burger–but my new favorite greens for burgers would be arugula (or roquette, a member of the mustard greens family), since it packs that lovely spicy punch.

What kind of lettuce do you like?

Update: Because of the website reformat, I’ve lost some of the photos on the site including the ones that used to be above.