OXO Salad Spinner: Review and Give-Away

Salad: it's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.

I might just change your life today. And then you'd forgive the fact that YET AGAIN I have left it far too long without an update.

Earlier this year, I had one of those conversations that start out of nothing with an elderly lady in my local supermarket. Want to know what it was about? Bagged salad.

I hate those stupid packets of pre-washed leaves that seem to spoil as soon as you open them. They are so, so, so ridiculously expensive. Do me a favour and compare the price (do the maths properly and work out the price per hundred grams!) of bagged lettuce or whatever versus its whole, shrink-wrapped cousin next time you're shivering in front of those overly effective chillers. You'll see.

Clearly my old lady friend was thinking the same.

'In my day, ' she said, somewhat gravely, 'we used a salad spinner. These bagged up ones (the salads - she was holding a packet of frisée as it happens) go bad after a day of being open.'

'My mum used to have one of those.' I offered. 'It was day-glo orange plastic and made a growling noise when you turned the handle.'

I couldn't tell if she was listening or not.

We both chose a packet of two Little Gems and went our separate ways. I wondered if she still had a salad spinner and if it was a day-glo orange model, and promptly resolved to steal my mum's cranky old one when I next went home.

As it happens, I forgot to and much time passed. I forgot all about spinners and continued washing my salad and draining it in a colander as usual, not minding the slightly limp leaves that this method produces. After all, I'd been eating salad like that for years (and if I'm honest, I always try and get away with not washing the lettuce anyway. The French always seem to get away without.)

Then, months ago now (I'm a slacker) I had an email from a rep for OXO, asking if I would like to try any of their range of baking products. I use a few already - I love their dough scoopfor portioning cookie dough before baking - and was looking through their range online when I noticed they also made rather funky looking salad spinners.

In a flash of inspiration I asked to give one a trial, thinking that the humble salad could take centre stage on the blog for once. We really can't always have sugar on the front page. It's not a good way to live.

Happily, OXO are letting me give away a brand spanking new Good Grips Salad Spinner(the link is to a slightly different model, the spinner is actually like mine in the pictures) to one lucky reader. We'll get to that later. First, let's check out what's so great about said salad spinners.

  

Here's the empty spinner. You'll notice straight off that it's not day-glo orange, and I can only apologise to you for that. Please remember that I am not the designer.

You'll also notice that there's no cranky little handle to turn. That's because the OXO spinner is automatic! You just push down on the lid, and your salad will spin away until all the water (or nearly all of it) is no longer clinging to the leaves, but instead collecting at the bottom of the bowl leaving you with dry, crisp salad to dress as you wish.

 

Look at it go!

The little point of design genius, as far as this salad maker can tell, if the little ridged point in the centre of the bowl. This keeps the leaves in their basket above the water level, so you get dry salad for no effort whatsoever. Amazing. You can also (or at least, I did) dress the leaves and serve the salad right out of the plastic bowl itself.

I noticed that a reviewer on Amazon has said what I am trying to get across in a much more efficient and direct way. Let's enlist the help of our good friends the quotation marks!

"be honest. can you live your life without a salad spinner? you probably can. but should you? no.

so if you're going to get one then this is the one for you. the central button you just push down and it spins your bits inside like there's no tomorrow. no longer do you have to contend with a rotating handle like on old-fashioned salad spinners that tend to fly off your counter and pierce you in the eye.

the oxo rocks."

Indeed.

I know you want one. Here's how (short of just going out and buying your own) you can get it.

I will be posting a mini-series of salads. Most likely there'll be three of them, but heck, I might do more. Simply leave a comment on any of those posts, or this one, telling me what your favourite salad is.

The rules (must have rules) are as follows:

• Leave a comment on this post letting me know what your favourite salad is. Maybe you hate salad and you want this for someone else. That's fine. I'm not going to judge you.
• If you prefer, leave the comment on the Delicious Delicious Delicious Facebook Page. You can like us as well! We'd love it if you did.
• Comments will close at midnight on Monday 10 December 2012. Winners will be selected at random shortly after. 
• Open to all people, everywhere.
• Email entries not accepted.