Maybe in chicken broth. I put romaine or spinach in chicken noodle soup all the time.

Put a heavy French dressing on it and make salad...or toss it....I think lettuce soup would be awful!

I dunno - I'll leave it up to you....

Lettuce Soup
Gourmet : May 2005

This soup is a great way to use lettuce's outer leaves and ribs, which usually go to waste. Any kind of potato and any salad greens, including lettuce, arugula, spinach, and watercress, will work fine.

Yield: Makes 4 servings
Active Time: 25 min
Total Time: 35 min

1 cup chopped onions, scallions, and/or shallots
1 garlic clove, chopped
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 teaspoon ground coriander
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
3/4 cup diced (1/3 inch) peeled potato
8 cups coarsely chopped lettuce leaves including ribs (3/4 lb)
3 cups water

Cook onion mixture and garlic in 2 tablespoons butter in a 4- to 5-quart heavy pot over moderately low heat, stirring, until softened, 3 to 5 minutes. Add coriander, salt, and pepper and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Stir in potato, lettuce, and water and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, until potato is very tender, about 10 minutes.

Purée soup in batches in a blender (use caution when blending hot liquids) and transfer to a 2- to 3-quart saucepan. Bring soup to a simmer, then whisk in remaining tablespoon butter and salt and pepper to taste.

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It really depends on what sort of lettuce it is. Dark green leafy lettuces make a nice soup, either cream of or broth...but iceberg soup would be a waste of time in my opinion.

Likewise, you can saute lettuces (very quickly) as you do other greens, but iceberg wouldn't be worth it.

Well, it's iceberg. Money is tight, it's hard for me to throw out food that costs me money. Not that iceberg lettuce has all this good nutrition I'd be missing.

Peruvian aji sauce?

Here is a link that might be useful: google result

Too bad you don't own a guinea pig. Ours gets all the fruit and veggie bits.

I made iceberg lettuce soup once years ago for similar reasons to yours. As I recall I shredded the lettuce, sweated it in some butter along with a little diced onion, then stewed it in chicken stock before pureeing it and adding some cream. It was nice, if delicately flavoured.

The best Chinese Restaurant in town makes a dish using lettuce which I think sounds awful, but is really delicious. It's called Almond Chicken Ding. Deboned chicken breast is battered and fried. A brown cream gravy is made from the drippings. Crisp shredded iceberg lettuce is placed on a plate and the chicken and gravy is poured over. Of course you must eat it immediately before the lettuce looses it's crunch.

Greeks make avgolemeno sauce stewed lettuce or greens. One of my close family friends loved lamb stew with braised celery in avgolemeno sauce. Celery is another vegetable that usually is served raw or most often is not braised all by itself. I'm not sure how the shredded lettuce would work, but if you decide to go ahead and cook or braise the lettuce, you might consider an egg/lemon sauce.

Here is one I copied from a book I sent to Karen in a swap one year. The soup was okay, but the radish salsa was wonderful! I think because of the other ingredients you may be able to sub iceberg and still get a decent soup.

Lettuce Soup

4 c torn butterhead lettuce leaves
2 c stemmed baby spinach
1 c fresh flat leaf parsley sprigs
1/3 c coarsely chopped shallot
3/4 c plain yogurt
2 T fresh lemon juice
2 c vegetable stock
salt & pepper to taste

Puree all the ingredients, except the salt & pepper, in a blender until smooth. Season to taste.
Refrigerate in a covered container until chilled, about 3 hours before serving. Tast and readjust the seasoning

Radish Salsa

1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 T red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp sugar
1/8 tsp dry mustard
dash of salt & freshly groung pepper
1/4 c red radish cut in matchstick strips
1/4 c seeded cucumber cut in matchstick strips

Whisk together the oil, vinegar, sugar, mustard, salt & pepper in a small bowl. Stir in the radish and cucumber. Cover and refrigerate .

Serve the soup in shallow bowls with a mound of the salsa spooned on top of each serving.

Linda

My BF frequently adds chopped iceburg lettuce when he's making vegetable soup. It's good! Very much like cabbage in appearance and texture.

My favorite use of shredded lettuce in cooking is as an ingredient in fried rice. Add it near the end of cooking as you might use bean sprouts. It gives a nice light texture to the fried rice and tastes good. Iceberg is the best for this.

Lettuce is used as a cooked vegetable in Chinese cooking, although I have not done it. I think it is stir fried. It would be worth searching for a recipe.

I think it would be good as party music50 describes. We should not stereotype lettuce as only a salad ingredient.

Jim

I found a recipe for stir-fry lettuce. I think it would be good.

At a Chinese restaurant a staff member was having a snack. We asked what she was eating and she said "lettuce". It wasn't on the menu.

Jim

Here is a link that might be useful: Stir-fry Lettuce

Ooooh stir fry, I didn't even think of that. That's actually kind of a good idea seeing as how I have rice, broccoli and tofu languishing in my fridge. I see stir fry for dinner tomorrow with lettuce. Although all these soups sound good too!

To stir fry lettuce, the trick is to do it fast. It only takes seconds, otherwise the lettuce will wilt too much and becomes watery and some what bitter.

I also don't salt it until after it's cooked. That will also make it watery.

To use it in soup, again, don't over cook.

For romaine lettuce, I cook the stems separate because they take longer to cook.

dcarch

Chicken on a bed of stir fried romaine lettuce

There are recipes for cooked lettuce (and cucumbers) in my old cookbooks but can't get to them now. They often cooked lettuce along with green peas.

For a soup, I'd sweat the lettuce, chopped onion and celery and some defrosted frozen peas in butter, add chicken or vegetable broth, a diced potato, some marjoram or tarragon and simmer until the potato is done. Puree in a blender or eat as is.

How much is iceberg lettuce going for now days?

My wisdom to impart, after lots and lots of years of cooking....don't throw good stuff after bad....
In other words don't spend more money trying to make something that is past it's prime or you didn't like at first trying to make it into something that's good to eat.
Around here iceberg is going for $1.19 a head....you ate part of it...it has just about no nutritional value and not much taste....don't ruin your stir fry with brown edged slightly bitter lettuce. Toss it!
That lesson was learned after tossing wine mushrooms canned beef broth chili peppers etc into a moose roast trying to make it not taste "moosey".
Linda C

"Moosey?" I'm afraid to ask. Not like "deery" I guess.

Moosey= gamey to the max, funky skunky and strong. The kind of thing that when it's in the pot and someone comes to your door...or past your open window...they ask.."What are you cooking" and sort of wrinkle the nose....

The art of making something that is "past its prime" taste good is an interesting subject IMHO. I'm sure that's how wine and cheese were discovered, and probably bread. Yes, there is a tipping point. But if I use some leftover veggies to make stir fry tonight, and it's not so good, I haven't lost much, and if it's good, I get fed.

Agreed lpink. It's not like you are going out and buying steak to put with this lettuce.

In my wife's family there is a tradition of taking leftover salad (already dressed and tossed) and using it to make something called "Salad soup". I don't have their recipe, if indeed there is one. I know that it is pureed, and that many other things are tossed into the soup, perhaps whatever is on hand. It may well be that the salad in "Salad soup" is as important to the end result as the stone in the proverbial "Stone soup" :-)

I did find this recipe in a 1979 Cooking for Two recipe book so there must have been someone out there who made lettuce soup once upon a time.

LETTUCE SOUP Â Makes 2 or 3 servings

1 small head iceberg lettuce
2 Tbs. butter or margarine
2 Tbs. flour
2 cups chicken broth
¼ cup celery, sliced or diced
1 Tbs. watercress, stemmed and chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

Strip off any coarse outer leaves of lettuce; wash and save. Core, rinse and thoroughly drain head. Refrigerate wrapped in a kitchen towel. When ready to serve, coarsely chop lettuce, including outer leaves, to equal 1 cup. (The remainder can be used for a salad.)

Melt butter; blend in flour and chicken broth. Cook over low heat until thickened. Add lettuce, celery and watercress. May be served as soon as vegetables are crisp-tender. (It does not improve on standing.) Season to taste with salt and pepper.

DS & I love to mix shredded iceberg lettuce into our refried beans.

BLT soup is one of my favorites. It came from a now extinct restaurant near us.

Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Soup

½ c. margarine
2/3 c. flour
1 quart milk
2 c. chicken stock
10 slices crisp fried bacon, crumbled
1 c. lettuce, finely chopped
½ c tomato, finely chopped
2 T. white worcestershire
½ t. nutmeg
¼ t. pepper
¼ t. Italian seasoning  optional

Melt margarine, blend in flour. Add milk, cook and stir until thickened. In boiling chicken stock, heat bacon and vegetables. Combine with cream soup. Season. Sprinkle with croutons before serving.

Emeril Lagasse's Lettuce Soup received rave reviews on the FN website.

How did your try go lpink?