Pre-washed baby leaf salads: processing of lamb’s lettuce

All the baby leaf salads we supply are First Range: carefully selected and packaged, they are not washed in the production and packaging departments, to prevent reducing their shelf life and compromising their quality.

The only exception to the rule is lamb’s lettuce which we deliver pre-washed to our customers.

Here’s why we decided to apply the washing method to this baby leaf salad and what process OP Isola Verde has adopted.

Lamb’s lettuce leaves grow in small bunches that, during harvesting, are cut at the height of the collar, i.e. very close to the ground, and not a few centimetres from the ground as is the case with other baby leaf salads.

Cutting so close to the soil means that, when harvesting lamb’s lettuce leaves, we inevitably “collect” small amounts of soil and sand, and for this reason the baby leaf salad needs to be washed before being packaged and shipped.

At OP Isola Verde we wash our lamb’s lettuce inside a washing and drying line.

The washing line consists of two large sequential tanks and allows larger foreign elements to be removed. However, the leaves must be dried before undergoing a more thorough inspection.

After being washed, the lamb’s lettuce moves on to a drying process, where we use a dewatering system, i.e. a system that continuously removes water by blowing and slightly “tossing” the leaves to limit the mechanical stress and prevent any damage during the processing phase.

Thanks to this dewatering method we can preserve the shelf life of the baby leaf salad, guarantee a safe product and, at the same time, avoid the consequences of shipping baby leaves that are still moist.

After the drying phase, the lamb’s lettuce passes through a state-of-the-art optical sorting unit which is able to remove any foreign objects or salad leaves that do not fully meet our quality standards.

At the end of the pre-washing, drying and sorting process, the lamb’s lettuce is ready to be packed.

As per the other baby leaf salads, this variety can be packaged in crates, trays or bags, and we can also customise the film used for the packaging so as to meet specific distribution demands in the large-scale distribution sector.