The Underrated Lettuce Martha Stewart Prefers For Salad - Tasting Table

In a YouTube video for Martha's Cooking School, Martha Stewart, the beloved home and cooking guru, singles out an often-overlooked type of lettuce for salads: butter lettuce. Calling it one of her favorites, she notes the sweet and tender quality of the leaves, especially when paired with citrus or yuzo and ginger vinaigrette dressings. Stewart chooses the small, light-colored inner leaves for her stacked butter lettuce salad recipe, dipping each leaf in dressing and layering atop hidden slices of avocado.

Stewart is not alone in her admiration for butterhead lettuce, the common versions being Bibb and Boston lettuce, per Healthline. The tender, buttery leaves harbor high amounts of Vitamins A and K and carotenoid antioxidants that help prevent vision loss. They provide a boost of iron, though Healthline recommends eating butter lettuce with foods high in Vitamin C for better iron absorption. Business Insider calls butter lettuce the most nutritious of 12 healthy lettuces, noting the high amounts of folate, potassium, and iron.

The most recognizable butter lettuces have green leaves, but red-leafed butterheads do exist, explains MasterClass. The seven crimson-hued butter cousins hold catchy names like Carmona, Speckles, Skyphos, Yugoslavian Red, Four Seasons, Blushed Butterhead, and Flashy Butter Oak Leaf. Due to rounded, petal-shaped leaves, butter lettuce often serves as the defining ingredient in lettuce wrap recipes. In fact, seven of the nine MasterClass butter lettuce recipes offer eclectic wraps stuffed with ingredients such as turmeric tilapia, Korean grilled beef, Mediterranean lamb meatballs, and smashed chickpeas.