Households urged to start boiling salad leaves from this weekend

It's one of the most common things that might make its way straight from the fridge to the bin or recycling. The bag of fresh salad leaves you bought three days ago and took a few pinches from but now is curling up or a few leaves have gone slimy.

Apart from trying to rescue those that still look fairly crisp, there is usually only one outcome. And at anything from 69p to well over a quid a bag, the wasted costs mount up over the year.

It's likely some of us will have thrown hundreds of pounds worth of salad leaves in the bin over the last few years. But, there is a way round it, which I would urge anyone to try with any leaves they were thinking of flinging in the bin today.

James Rogers is the director of food safety research and testing for Consumer Reports and said that washing with cold water of leaves or veg does not remove bacteria. In an article on the Consumer Reports website he said that eating leaves that have been next to slimy ones, should be safe.

He said: "As gross as slimy greens are, the good news is that the damage caused by age and spoilage bacteria is unlikely to make you sick if you pick out the slimy bits—or, indeed, even if you eat a slimy piece by mistake.

"I am not going to say absolutely not, because there are exceptions to the rule. There are some people who are very sensitive to eating spoiled food."

It is possible that the leaves have more harmful bacteria, even before they have spoiled.

He said: "Our leafy greens have a lot of bacteria on them—because of the way they're grown, the soil, the air, the animals that walk through the fields.

"And those bacteria can include types that can cause serious foodborne illnesses, including Salmonella, Listeria and pathogenic strains of E. coli."

But, he confirmed that the boiling of them would remove these and he suggests cooking them by either quickly blanching them or stir-frying them to kill the bacteria. Just be careful that they are not too far gone with too many slimy and producing a liquid.

But, if you don't eat the lot in some big salads over a day or two and find there is half a bag left and they are curling up and a few have gone slimy, bizarrely, you can cook with them.

I tried the salad leaves hack - here's what I found

I experimented with a bag of past their best leaves I didn't want to chuck and flung them into a tomato pasta sauce I was making.

Within a few minutes they a wilted down to something just like spinach.

For the next test, I just straight boiled a bag down, and there it was, a dark green pile of spinach like leaves.

Add in some slat and pepper, garlic, anything to taste.

They can be used to replace anything like the spinach in Indian potatoes sag aloo.

The crispier more iceberg-lettuce like leaves, don't work as well, but can be snipped down and they blend in a swell.

Once you try it you will never look back, and more importantly never waste salad leaves again, avoiding that waste of cash and food.

In the video, I cooked up some wilted looking pea shoots that were a few days over the use by date for the first time.

It took a bit longer to boil due to the stalks, but the end result could be eaten on its own and was tasty.

The good news is experts believe that boiling them should kill any bacteria that may have been forming, and even any present when the produce was bought.