Bagged salad stops going brown and lettuce stays fresh for longer with Martha Stewart tip

One of those small annoyances in life that many people never really get the hang of is how to keep their food from spoiling, which can ruin a meal and be a costly mistake after the last few years of grocery inflation. One of the most annoying instances of this is when you purchase some tasty leafy green veg, only for it to quickly spoil and be thrown away.

Soft greens like these have a worst enemy when it comes to staying fresh, moisture. Excess dampness, which will often develop in the cool conditions of your fridge, causes the breakdown of the vegetable's cells, turning your luscious salad into a wilted brown and soggy mess.

On hardier salad veg like lettuces, you can tell when they are too moist as they start to develop a reddish-brown tinge at the edge, a sign of spoilage known as rust. But the easiest way to tell is always using your nose, if you give it a sniff and it doesn't smell right, it might have gone off.

When this happens, it can be frustrating to know that you have wasted money on food that you are going to have to chuck in the bin. However, there is a simple way to stop your spinach leaves turning to mush, or your lettuce looking like the one that outlived Liz Truss.

Unlike many other products where keeping them sealed in a bag will often keep them fresh for longer, the best thing you can do with your salad leaves and shredded lettuce is to find a way to keep them dry.

A trick that is often used in restaurant kitchens can be applied to your kitchen at home. It works for delicate and fancy microflowers that are scattered on pretentious plates of food, as well as your mixed bags of salad from the supermarket.

But famed TV chef Martha Stewart has a few top tips for those frustrated with a bag of soggy mush, that they hoped would be a delicious salad. Firstly, keep those leaves dry.

Once you have got your soft-leafed vegetables home, remove them from the bag if they appear wet. You should then pat them down with a paper towel and remove this excess moisture.

To store your salads, place a piece of kitchen towel in a plastic container and then put your leaves in. This should draw away any moisture that gets in, but you will need to replace it every day to get the most out of your leafy greens.

This step is likely unnecessary if you are planning on eating these vegetables on the day of purchase, but if you need to keep the salad fresh for another couple of days and dread a wilted spinach leaf, you might want to consider this simple kitchen hack.

Martha Stewart's other tip to avoid binning your salad applies to many other forms of bagged produce - if you want it to last longer, purchase a head of lettuce rather than a bag of it that has been pre-shredded. Equally, if you can find fresh salad leaves that are not stored in a bag, or pre-washed, your leaves will likely last beyond their sell-by date.

Finally, to keep those leafy greens both leafy and green in your fridge, you should make sure that you are not storing them anywhere too cold, as freezing will also damage their cell structure and cause them to wilt. Ideally, they should be kept at between 3C and 5C.