Thanks to Eve Jochnowitz for this guest post. Eve teaches Yiddish, Jewish Studies, and Culinary History at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Culinary Center of New York – she is also a Tuv Ha’Aretz CSA member at the 14th Street Y in NYC.

The rich soils of the United States are full of all sorts of beneficial insects and nutrients that nourish delicious produce; and a great many of us are becoming personally acquainted with this miraculous dirt in our CSA share! We appreciate it, of course, but at some point we need to wash it all off.

De-bugging one’s vegetables is a challenge in any kosher kitchen, and a number of home cooks are reasonably concerned that using organic produce might expose us to more insects, making the inspection process more labor-intensive. In fact, the opposite is true. According to mashgikhim with extensive bug-checking experience, non-organic greens are not in fact less infested than organic greens; they are merely infested with smaller, more tenacious predators that have become resistant to pesticides.

The good news for those who keep kosher, are vegetarian, or simply want to limit their consumption of insects because of the gross-out factor, is that organic vegetables, along with all their other virtues, provide the safest and easiest way to eat bug-free – if bugs are visible, they can be more easily removed.

So how do we clean some of the harder-to-clean vegetables? Washing greens is not as difficult as it seems.

• Fill your sink or a couple pots with cool water.
• Submerge the greens in the first pot and swish them around with your hands.
• Lift the vegetables out of the water – do not pour them through a strainer, or you will merely deposit the sand you just washed off back on the greens!
• Repeat this process with the same greens in the second pot, once or twice as needed to make sure that they are clean.
• Dry your greens in a salad spinner and pat them dry with clean towels.
• Refrigerate. You can place a square of paper towel in the bags with the greens to absorb excess moisture and keep them fresh longer.

Wash your vegetables, examine them, and enjoy them in good health.