# salad spinners that have enough clearance so the basket is not in the water!?!



## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

I have a huge beef with salad spinners.

They all have a basket inside a pot or bowl thing, and the basket spins around on a pin sticking up from the pot. 

My problems is WHY DO THEY MAKE THE PIN SO SHORT that the salad, after having been spun, is sitting in the water!!!!????

It seems so obvious to me, that you have to have a decent clearance between the basket and the pot, so the salad doesn't end up in the water.  It would take SO LITTLE to do, just a little brain power, make that little stick half an inch longer.  No big technology, not brain surgery, not rocket science. 

Now i have never owned an expensive salad spinner because it doesn;t seem that they are any better, but I would be willing to buy a good one, an OXO or soimething, if i could be guaranteed that it would have a deeper space between the basket and the bowl. 

Can anyone tell me if this exists, (and if not, WHY NOT?!)

i regularly have to spin the salad two or three or more times, and every time, it's sitting in the water - and gets wet again.


----------



## chefedb (Apr 3, 2010)

Take a china cap or steamer basket put greens in it .Go on your patio or your yard and spin it around .You dont need a second container to retain water. Centrivacal force will hold greens in basket, and extrude water out.  I one time worked in a large place that put salad in a clothes dryer that was used for this only (heat coil was disconnected) worked great  dry salad for 400


----------



## kyheirloomer (Feb 1, 2007)

Siduri, if that's truly a problem for you I suspect you're not using the spinner correctly.

Spinners are designed to remove that last bit of water from washed greens. If there's so much water on them that the basket is sitting in water, you started with leaves that were too wet.

After washing them, put them in a collander to drain. Then finish the job in the spinner. See it that makes a difference.

FWIW: The pin on my Oxo holds the basket slightly less than a half inch above the bottom. I have never had the basket sitting in water.


----------



## prairiechef (May 22, 2010)

Punch a hole just above the bottom of the spinner, on the side wall.. Seriously. One nickel sized hole.

When cleaning large amounts of greens, we just didn't have time to be straining it all. We had four holes in our 20 litre spinner. Straight from the water in one sink into the spinner in the other sink... spin, water streams out of the holes, greens are nice and clean and dry. If you do this, just make sure your spinner is in the sink.


----------



## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

KY, i use a spinner not to waste time - before having a spinner, which was for some 20 of my 40 odd years of cooking - I would vigorously shake handfuls (handsful?) of greens out one by one, and they came dry.  It didn;t take long, but it took longer than i wanted.

I want to wash them and spin  them - yeah, i could dry them first, but I like my tools to work for me, or i do it by hand.  Letting it sit - how long? a minute? five? I don;t really want to have to wait, which is why i have a spinner.  And if there are lots of crinkles in the leaves, like in nice romaine, the water catches in there anyway and doesn't drain.  The basket is not sitting immersed in water, but it touches the water which clings to the leaves at the bottom.  Even after the second time.  I usually have to spin 3 times to get dry leaves.

Prairiechef, I use the bowl of the spinner to wash the greens - I fill the pot with water, with the basket full of leaves already in it.  I swish them around with my hands and then lift the basket so the sand goes to the bottom, dump it and repeat.  When i complained about water sitting in the bowl and re-wetting the greens, someone gave me a spinner that had a hole at the bottom.  But then i had to use another bowl to wash them, without the convenience of the basket to lift out, so it just extended the time of salad washing. 

Once, my sister in law in the states had one that had a very deep channel all around the bottom of the base (bowl) that caught quite a lot of water - i asked her for one like that but she got me the one with the holes.  It was a no-name brand.  Never saw another like it.  The oxos that i;ve seen were sealed in a box or had an opaque bowl so i couldn;t see the clearance. 

You might say i'm fussy, but the problem is very simply solved by the manufacturer, make the &%*[email protected] pin a little longer.  It's not rocket science.  And you save time washing and drying the salad.  So, yeah, i could let it drain first, but why shouldn't a spinner be made that actually leaves the lettuce dry?  I wanted to know what spinner that might be

(Speed is of utmost for me - i often get home at 8:30 and have to start cooking.  Eating at 9 is already late for me - the idea of leisurely draining the greens would require too much advanced thought and/or time.)


----------



## prairiechef (May 22, 2010)

Long post.

Ok... after reading all that you have three options:

-Source a better (for you) spinner.

-create a better spinner.

-Suck it up.

and...umm.. "leisurely draining" enough greens to feed 1 or 2 people... by the time you bend over to get the salad dressing, you should be fine. Maybe you're Steve Jobs and your life is scheduled down to the nanosecond... fair enough. But if you can't spare the extra 10 seconds it takes to shake your lettuce dry before dumping it in your spinner, you might wanna reevaluate your daily duties. if you wash them in the bowl... fair enough... then put the spinner in the other sink and use it as a colander. Or use your sink to wash your greens. Or hold them in your hands and let water run over them. Or put them in the basket and hold it under running water.

Just for fun, maybe put a stopwatch next to you the next time you wash greens. Start to finish. I'd be surprised if it passes a minute and half.


----------



## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

Why the sarcasm Prariechef?  Have i offended you? 

I like things that work, things that are well-designed.  If they are labor saving devices, they should actually save labor. And if they can do it with very little effort on the manufacturer's part (well, a little mental effort but no added expense), why are they so poorly designed?  People have a million idiotic and wasteful gadgets in the house, like electric can openers, that require no less time or effort than crank operated ones.  People have food processors that occupy half a kitchen counter, and bread makers and every possible convenience contraption. I bet if i were asking for an ELECTRIC salad spinner noone would bat an eye. 

I am asking if anyone happens to know of a brand of spinner that has a very simple thing - a higher distance between the basket and the bowl.  I;ve bought five different types over the years and none of them have it.  I haven't tried an oxo, or the other expensive german brand (can't remember the name) but maybe someone has and can tell me if they have the characteristic I'm looking for.  That's not much to ask.  If it;s not a problem for you, it happens to be for me.  And if i have to SHAKE the water out, then i don't NEED a salad spinner - i did it like that for years.


----------



## gunnar (Apr 3, 2008)

I have to say that all the big professional salad spinners I have use had a drain hole..it's really the best solution, just have to use it near a sink or on the drainboard.

looks like this big boy here:http://www.google.com/products/cata...=X&ei=upqXTfyBA43XiALN3sSdCQ&ved=0CD4Q8wIwAg#


----------



## chefross (May 5, 2010)

I use the salad spinner whenever I am drying greens. I take the approach that I will drain as much water from the basket as possible before I place it in the spinner, as has been offered.

Try placing a sheet of paper toweling in the spinner with the greens. It helps take out some of the last bit of liquid and it works.


----------



## chefedb (Apr 3, 2010)

There is a salad spinner that is sold  commercial only. It is called The Green Machine. It does a great job of drying greens.


----------



## petemccracken (Sep 18, 2008)

chefedb said:


> There is a salad spinner that is sold commercial only. It is called The Green Machine. It does a great job of drying greens.


Is this the Green Machine you are referring to?


----------



## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

Thanks for your suggestions, but i guess it's not clear,  I'm a home cook.  I don't do 6 liters of greens, I don;t have anybody washing up for me, I certainly don;t have a thousand dollars to spend to wash my salad!  

I just want to know a very simple thing, is there a salad spinner out there that keeps the basket a reasonable distance from the water.  I'd pay a little more, if i knew that there was a more reasonable clearance than the slightly more than half centimeter that my current one has.

The kind with the hole that drains the water out is not an advantage for me, because salad spinners take up a lot of room in a small city kitchen so i want it to do more than one job.  I like to use the basket to wash all kinds of greens, even those that don't need to be spun (spinach to boil) because you can swish it around in the water and then lift it out all at once so the sand stays behind).  If it has a hole, it means getting some other pot out, and then pulling out the greens by handfuls, and that's no easier than spinning it three times when i do salad.  There is no saving of time.  And as i said, i HAD one like that, and didn;t like it.  

I guess i'm the only one who has this problem, or the only people who read this forum on equipment are professionals.


----------



## chefedb (Apr 3, 2010)

All of them made for as you say "'The Home Cook"""have a bottom on them therefore none of them are any good. So after spinning, blot with paper towls


----------



## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

chefedb said:


> All of them made for as you say "'The Home Cook"""have a bottom on them therefore none of them are any good. So after spinning, blot with paper towls


No, actually, I've seen plenty that have holes in the bottom, and a hole in the top where water is supposed to run in so supposedly you can wash the salad that way. I don't find that a good way to wash greens, unless they're already clean - not when they're full of sand or snail droppings, as they often are here.

There is no reason they can't have a bottom with a pin that holds the basket higher, however. In fact i did see one in someone's house, except the brand was not written on it. Does anyone know the height of the oxo basket? Or any other brand?

I know i can dry with towels, but what is the point of a spinner, if i have to do it again by hand? I did it all by hand in the past, so at that point, what is the advantage? It would be like a dishwasher that you have to take the dishes out and rinse them a last time, or a food processor that only half chops the food, but you have to finish doing it with a knife! Or an electric mixer that only mixes the top half of the batter, and leaves the last half inch untouched. Does anyone see my point?


----------



## prairiechef (May 22, 2010)

There is no sarcasm... none. I'm giving you the opinion of  guy (like many, many others on this site) who has cleaned a massive amount of salad greens in his career. You have been told many very very simple solutions to solve your problem as it stands. We see your point, but we don't see why the extra 3 seconds to lift the basket and dump the bowl before respinning the greens is a huge issue.  

So, to answer the only question you have, I guess...

No, I don't know of a home salad spinner with a longer pin.


----------



## leeniek (Aug 21, 2009)

Siduri, I've never seen a salad spinner with a longer pin.  I don't use the bowl of mine for washing the greens, I do that in under running water then dry them in the spinner.  You definitely do get home late in the evening and I can understand how you would want to make your dinner prep as efficient as possible.  Before we had the kids I didn't get home until 7pm most nights and if we were lucky I'd have dinner on the table by 8.  To save myself time I would on Sunday prep and wash a few days worth of salad greens just to save myself that little bit of extra time.


----------



## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

Thanks, Leeniek, 

I know there are many solutions, and even if I had all the leisure in the world, there are some tasks that i just find irritating because i know they could be simpler.  And because sometimes industries spend incredible amounts of time and money developing idiotic gadgets that save no time at all (electric can openers, for instance, which, unless you have only one hand, or terrible arthritis, really only take up space) but none on the simplest gadgets. 

If anyone should come across one that doesn't require spinning several times, please tell me.  I will run to buy it.  Like the better mousetrap, I'll beat a path to your door. 

As to a professional chef's opinions, I can understand if your job is to cook all day, you will do all sorts of things. You're being paid for it.  But I bet you definitely would NOT want to cut with a dull knife.  Not that it's impossible to cut and cook if you don;t have the best knife, but you wouldn't want to, and no one will say there are other solutions (like pressing harder, sliding the knife back and forth as you slice, etc).    Think of this as my dull knife.


----------



## chefedb (Apr 3, 2010)

Invent your own, patent it-  maybe you will make a lot of $


----------



## leeniek (Aug 21, 2009)

Siduri, having been the recipient of many lousy can openers, my late mother's electric one is a blessing.. it works perfectly all the time and sits on the counter beside the toaster, but I do get what you are saying when it comes to gadgets taking up so much space.  

My salad spinner has bit the dust so at some point I need to get a new one... if I find one that has a decent lenghth pin I'll let you know.  My spinner was 22 years old and I am sure things have changed since it was first made...


----------



## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

leeniek said:


> My salad spinner has bit the dust so at some point I need to get a new one... if I find one that has a decent lenghth pin I'll let you know. My spinner was 22 years old and I am sure things have changed since it was first made...


Good luck, leeniek. My feeling is that things have indeed changed, and usually for the worse! Everyday stuff used to be made well and made to last, but today's stuff tends to be more and more crappy. I think it's entropy!


----------



## kyheirloomer (Feb 1, 2007)

_Does anyone know the height of the oxo basket? _

Not for nothing, Siduri, but I think at this point you're merely bitching, rather than seeking real information.

I am not a professional, just a home cook like you, and would find all of the offered solutions more than acceptible. And I answered that question for you at the beginning of this thread; it was the second or third post, in fact.

I would further suggest that the reason manufacturers are not rectifying this "simple" problem is that neither they nor most cooks see it as a problem. Like all of us, you have idiosyncratic ways of doing things. But when you try to extrapolate those specific techniques to the cooking world at large you often come a cropper. I believe this is one of those cases.

You might also want to investigate what it costs to retool a product before using words like small and simple---which, in the manufacturing world, refer not to physical size but to money.

I don't know the specifics of what the tooling costs are to build a salad spinner. But I can make some guesses as to the economic impact of a "simple" change such as raising the center post (this assumes that there isn't a point where height equals lack of function). The actual retooling could run as much as a hundred grand. Raising the center post means the basket will no longer fit, so retooling means not only raising the center post, but making the bowl, itself, larger (or the basket smaller), adding even more costs.

Now add in the inventory costs of keep parts for two models instead of one, so that when one of us breaks the basket (it happens) or bowl we can order a replacement part. More money tied up in this "simple" solution.


----------



## chefedb (Apr 3, 2010)

KYHeirloomer said:


> _Does anyone know the height of the oxo basket? _
> 
> Not for nothing, Siduri, but I think at this point you're merely bitching, rather than seeking real information.
> 
> ...


KY ! I agree again (how about that). Many answers were given in many post. This is like Beating a dead horse or as they say in Brooklyn "Enough Already"


----------



## allie (Jul 21, 2006)

I have a really cheap salad spinner.  I think I might have paid $10 for it at a Kitchen outlet store.  I can't remember the exact name of the store and have no clue what brand of spinner this is.  The bottom has little rectangular holes all the way around the outer diameter.  There is a removable basket that sits off the bottom about half an inch or so.  It works really well.  When I bought it, I had never used a spinner so wasn't sure if it was something I would use.  In the past few years, it has been used so often, I wonder how I ever got along without it.


----------



## kokopuffs (Aug 4, 2000)

Oxo oxo oxo is all I ever used and it works great.  Get one.


----------



## kyheirloomer (Feb 1, 2007)

Siduri, in a fit of nothing better to do I tried an experiment.

First, with the basket of the Oxo in place, I added water until it touched the bottom of the basket. Measured it, and it's exactly a half-cup. Hold that thought.

Next, I tried washing greens the way you describe, using the spinner bowl (I normally do them in the sink). In order to have enough room to actually swish them around and flush out any sand, dirt, etc., I had to do this twice----I'm talking about enough salad for the two of us, not a commercial quantity. So, using your point of view, this is already a waste of time.

First batch was transferred to the sink (so as to not "dirty" another bowl) where excess water naturally drained. After washing the second batch, it and the strainer were put in the sink while I emptied and rinsed the bowl. First batch was then returned to the strainer, and the spinner used as usual. I did not, as would have been my inclination, shake the strainer because I wanted to maximize the amount of water held by the greens.

I did not actually time any of this, but would say the whole procedure took less than three minutes.

Net result: Water in the bowl did not come anywhere near the bottom of the strainer.

So, based on this and on your unique viewpoint of what constitutes a time/labor savings, I'd say the large Oxo will come as close to doing the job as you're be able to find.


----------



## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

Sorry, I was away for a while and didn't have easy access to internet.

Thanks KY for the elaborate experiment. So OXO it is, next time i buy a spinner.    (By the way, the hard plastic of the bowl - does that actually not crack?  i had a measuring cup made of hard plastic, actually two, and they both split with long, vertical cracks - but maybe it was another inferior plastic?)

Just to be more precise about my questions - I was not asking why a producer who already makes a salad spinner doesn;t retool their factory, but why all the dozens of brands around seem to be the same, with low clearance from the bottom - my answer is that, like most designers of home products, the person who designed it has never lifted a finger around the house and has no idea what are the practical aspects of their design.  I can name a dozen things off the top of my head that are badly designed like that.

Anyway, Looking more carefully at mine, i noticed that the basket, though always too low, with time has bent out of shape and tends to be higher in the middle and hang down around the edges, accounting for the water touching it and re-wetting the greens.  I tell you, i spin three times, and every time i have to dump a bunch of water out!  Three times is absurd, it would be like your washing machine washing the clothes only half way and always having to do them three times, or a peeler that only peels partly, and leaves half behind, or a pen that only writes half the time, so you have to go back and fill in the words it didn;t write!

One last thought - i recently read about some studies about complaining.  They divided people in two groups - one group wrote fifteen minutes a day on some banal facts, the tv they watched or the food they ate, something like that, and the other wrote complaints about all the things that went wrong that day.  At the end of the year, the complainers had been significantly healthier than the others, had far less sick days and far less flus and colds!  Complaining is good!  They did the same with people with severe arthritis, the complaint group reported less pain in regular doctor visits!

Anyway, thanks ky.  Didn't it work well to wash the greens directly in the spinner?  For me, the sink is always dirty with everything others have done with it during the day.  And why take out another bowl when you have your spinner bowl, with fitted basket to lift out?


----------



## kokopuffs (Aug 4, 2000)

My reply will be short-winded!  8^}

For 4 years of weekly use, there's been neither warpage of the inner basket nor cracking of the outer bowl made of hard plastique.  The main rule here is to NOT PUT THE UNIT INTO THE DISHWASHER.  The steam coming out of the washer's vent will warp otherwise melt the unit as did occur with another Oxo spinner I owned.


----------



## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

thanks kokopuffs.  I think my dishwasher might actually not warp the plastic since it has no dry heating cycle, just a hot water rinse, and we have it set to a lower heat anyway.  The kind of splitting of hard transparent plastic i was afraid of happened without any apparent reason to a heavy plastic measuring cup my daughter had, before she even had a dishwasher - never figured it out.  I guess the spinner is of a better quality.


----------



## brownedoff (Apr 4, 2011)

I use a Dynamic salad spinner which is excellent. It's a professional item so a bit more expensive but well worth the extra cost. It's also quite colourful.


----------



## evart (Oct 8, 2015)

Oh, my, Siduri, you have opened a new line of discussion. I could not live without my electric can opener. I could never handle any other as I have arthritis and when I tell you that I have been cooking for 60 years, you can guess at my age.  Salad spinners? I agree with others, shake the leaves first.


----------



## evart (Oct 8, 2015)

Your point is well taken.  No blotting after spinning.


----------

