Iceberg lettuce used to be the common lettuce used by restaurants and in the home. Somewhere in the mid 70’s it was snubbed by people who decided that it was just too common. Don’t get me wrong, I love leaf lettuces; I make salads with them all week long. But iceberg has a legitimate standing in my mix. There’s nothing like iceberg wedges and a good bleu cheese dressing. How ‘bout that Crab Louie? As described above, an old fashioned American burger demands crispy iceberg, tomatoes, pickles and onions. Let’s hear it for taco salads, BLT’s – even a standard iceberg, tomato and cucumber salad with, yes that’s right, thousand island dressing. Tuna salad in an iceberg cup… some Chinese recipes even call for it in stir-fry! The list goes on and on.

Iceberg lettuce is grown in California’s Salinas Valley from the early spring through early fall, then further south in Huron California for a month in the fall as the growers in Yuma, Arizona prepare for the winter-to-spring crop. Then in the spring it’s back to Huron for another month before starting all over again in Salinas. Why all this shuffling around? Simple answer: to give us a year-round crop, the iceberg business follows the warm weather. Salinas is warm in the summer, Huron is warm in the fall, and Yuma is warm through the winter.

According to Tanimura and Antle, the largest growers of iceberg lettuce in California, iceberg – originally called crisphead lettuce – was discovered growing in a leaf lettuce field all by its lonesome. The surrounding growers liked it so much that they teamed up to improve the variety and began growing hundreds of acres of the new sweet, crispy lettuce. The famous Burpee seed company tells another story: They offered it under the name cabbage lettuce in 1894, claiming that their founder W. Altee Burpee originated the variety on his Pennsylvania farm.  Wherever it originated, by the early 1900’s crisphead lettuce was very popular, not only for its crispy sweetness, but also because it held up longer than other varieties.

Bruce Church, a California businessman and lettuce grower, was one of the first to ship crisphead by rail car to the east coast, topping it with mounds of shaved ice to keep it cool and fresh. When the shipments of lettuce reached their eastern destination children would excitedly shout “the icebergs are coming!” Thus began the new name of iceberg lettuce. It is also a note of interest that Bruce Church left behind a legacy of vegetable growing in California: his son-in-law is responsible today for the Fresh Express packaged salads that appear on supermarket shelves everywhere; a concept Bruce began work on as far back as 1964.

Selection of iceberg in the stores depends on what you want in a head lettuce. The lettuce should appear fresh and pale green. A brown stem is fine as long as the rest of the head is fresh. (The milk inside the stem dries after cutting, resulting in the harmless brown color.) Avoid wilted wrapper leaves, and check the butt end of the head. If there is a lot of browning on the ribs, move on. Some heads of iceberg are light and puffy; that’s fine if you want a loose leaf head. A heavier, firm compact head will yield more lettuce and will have a sweet, crunchy heart.

Here’s a technique to get the most crunch out of your iceberg lettuce: Unwrap and rinse the head of lettuce, then lay it on a solid counter with the stem end up. Make a fist and give the stem a solid whack from above. This will loosen the leaves from the stem, allowing the core to slide out easily. Now cut your iceberg head into four wedges and submerge them in a large bowl of ice water for one hour.  Drain and pat them dry, and use immediately. This process yields lettuce that is extra crispy, cool and refreshing.

There’s not as much nutrition in iceberg lettuce as its leafy cousins, but so what? The other stuff in that salad or burger has enough nutrition in it, and it’s not like you’re eating it every day. Iceberg does have a significant amount of vitamin K, some vitamin C and potassium, as well as iron. So be yourself, and don’t let the iceberg lettuce snobs keep you from eating what you really enjoy. As your produce man, I’m here to tell you its okay to purchase and consume iceberg lettuce. No penance necessary.