Checking Romaine Lettuce

[Music] Welcome everybody to this very special  presentation. My name is Rabbi Eleff, I'm   the Managing Director of Community Relations for  OU Kosher. I'm assisted by Rabbinic Coordinator,   and my colleague, Rabbi Daniel Sharratt, who  is one of our experts at the OU headquarters   in terms of checking for bugs in produce,  otherwise known as Bedikas Tolayim. We're   very excited to be able to present you today,  coming to you from the Kosher.com kitchen,   in partnership with them to be able to really  be able to provide you with information that   you need to understand what is Bedikas  Tolayim, what is checking for insects,   what type of insects do we have to look out  for, and how do we do it. So, to really give   you the bird's eye view, or rather, the bug's  eye view, I'm going to turn over the countertop   to our my colleague Rabbi Sharratt, who will  take it away. Thank you, Rabbi Eleff. [Music]   Welcome everyone. Today we're going to focus on  romaine lettuce. Now when it comes to romaine   lettuce, there are two ways on how to check. One  is leaf by leaf on a light box. So, obviously   for this you're going to need a light box. The  second method is called the thrip cloth method,   and for that you're going to need a thrip cloth,  which is not a paper towel, something specifically   made for this purpose. It's basically a filter  that catches all the bugs minus the water. And   for that you're also going to need two plastic  strainers. Now the benefits of doing the thrip   cloth method, which the OU does in all of their  food service establishments, is it's a lot faster   when you're doing more, and just more efficient  and effective. To prepare your thrip cloth,   you're going to need two plastic strainers and  your thrip cloth. Now to prepare it properly,   you want to take your thrip cloth and place it  over the first strainer, just like this. And make   sure that when you place your thrip cloth, not to  put it over here where the edges are exposed but   rather dead center and you don't have any of the  edges exposed. Once you do that you're going to   take your second strainer and you're going to put  it right on top, and you're going to lock it in   place. When you're soaking your romaine lettuce  in water you want to add soap. Question is,   how much soap to add. You want to add enough where  the romaine feels actually slippery to the touch.   You're going to let that soak for approximately  5 minutes, after which you're going to rinse   the romaine leaves one by one under a stream of  water because look, it's full of soap suds. Now,   I like to hold the romaine leaf not upright but  rather upside down, because you see, the water,   it flows through the ridges as opposed to just  over. It's not the most important thing to do   but every little tiny thing we do adds to a more  robust washing. Additionally, on the back end of   the romaine there are these folds that you need to  open up and actually rinse through it. As you see,   even right here when we open up the fold there's  actually a bug right there that we just rinsed   off, that's hiding underneath these flaps. Now  that we've washed our romaine, we have our nice   little pile of washed romaine lettuce. Now we can  begin the checking method. Either leaf-by-leaf   or we're going to demonstrate here as well, the  thrip cloth method. So for the thrip cloth method   what we want to do is we want to take our piles  of leaves that we just washed and put it in a   new fresh bowl and fill it up with plain water.  Once it's filled up with plain water we want to   agitate it and then take out the leaves carefully  with the water. What you don't want to do is grab   the whole bundle and take it out in all one fell  swoop because the chances of dragging a bug and   trapping a bug in there are more significant.  Rather, you want to take it carefully one to   two leaves at a time, and now that you're left  with just your plain bowl of water, we're going   to pour that water through the thrip cloth. And  then we're going to be able to check that thrip   cloth on a light box, which is just as effective  as checking each individual leaf one-by-one.   Now that we've poured the water through our  strainers, that our thrift cloth is in between,   we're going to carefully take the thrip cloth  and place it on the light box. And now we're   going to look. You want to look carefully, take  your time, and make sure there are no bugs. And   if there are no bugs, then you can enjoy your  romaine lettuce. If you do not have a light box,   I strongly recommend you to go get one but if you  do not have a light box, then the only other way   to check would be leaf-by-leaf, holding the leaves  up to a bright light or the sun. Baruch Hashem,   our romaine lettuce came out clean but I want  to show you why it's so important to wash your   romaine to begin with. Here I have what we've  actually washed off initially and why it's so   important to wash your romaine lettuce. Rabbi  Eleff, you want to come check out what we've   got here? Sure. It looks like we've got a lot  of stuff on this light box here. Whoa whoa whoa,   Rabbi Eleff, we don't need a jeweler's look. Okay?  Okay, so what do we... I see a guy over here, it's   a little round and fat with some legs. What am I  looking at over there? What bug is that? So round   and fat, that's going to be your aphid and  this one happens to be a reddish color, but   aphids can come in all sorts of colors. They can  come in green, black, clearish, and red, brown,   all the colors of the rainbow. Right next to it  there's like a long, it looks almost like a worm,   a small little... Yes, so those are thrips. The  adult thrips are going to have a striped abdomen,   and then the front part, and they're going to have  wings, and the front part, they're all going to be   kind of a yellowish color. So what size  do they have to be for me to be able to,   for them to be a problem? Oh, good question. So,  the OU says that in order for it to be considered   a halacahic problem, the bug has to be visible to  the naked eye clearly as a bug. Which we're going   to show you soon, so stay tuned. Thank you, Rabbi  Sharratt, for explaining all this to me. Sure,   thank you for having me. I'll be back. So, when  you're checking leaf-by-leaf, you have to be very   careful to make sure you check in between all the  little cracks and crevices because most people   think when they're checking that they're just  looking for any shadows that catch their eye. And   many times because of the overlap of the leaf, you  won't be able to necessarily see those shadows.   So, as you see when you open up those folds  you can actually now see a bug that you would   not have seen otherwise. So, when you're checking  leaf-by-leaf, you have to check both sides of the   leaf, making sure you open it up and check in  between all the little cracks and crevices and   the overlaps of the leaf. So for closing remarks,  now that you know and have a better understanding   and awareness of the importance of washing and  checking your romaine lettuce, enjoy! [Music]