Hydroponics: not your grandma’s lettuce. Not that grandma wouldn’t like some lettuce from hydroponics. Even though hydroponics has been around for quite a while now, it’s still the new kid on the block in terms of popular modern agriculture.

What does this mean for the home chef? Well, you may be able to get your hands on some more premium produce, for starters. Since hydroponics has been a growing practice for many years now, there are more and more smaller operations popping up to provide small-producer yields to the masses locally.

Basically, just as you can go to your local farmer’s market to buy fresh veggies, you can also seek out hydroponic growers, either at the same markets or even at their farm locations. Many of them have onsite stores.

One of the best-growing crops suited to this style is lettuce. Typically, lettuce grown in hydroponics is naturally cleaner and less prone to blights and other leaf damage. Is it actually better than regular lettuce grown in the ground? No. While it could be optimized in the controlled environment of hydroponics, it’s not necessarily better just because of that alone.

What can you do with it? Well… anything you might do with regular lettuce. My wife has spent the better part of the last two months growing a buttercrunch variety in our home hydroponic setup.

While still new to growing this way ourselves, my wife is no slouch when it comes to preparing her rabbit food. One of her favorites is a tuna salad lettuce wrap. It’s one of those recipes that is as simple as the name suggests. You take a wrap (tortilla, flour, corn, dried tomato, etc.), and fill it with a layer of lettuce, a scoop or two of tuna mix and some optional toppings. Mrs. Hill likes throwing avocadoes in them which is just another rich creamy texture against the crisp crunchy lettuce. Myself, I like acidic flavors and lots of crunch, so she normally throws pickles in mine. If you like the crunch but want more of a fresh taste, then you could use cucumbers in place of pickles. Roll it up and enjoy on the go.

The way out here we aren’t picky about where our lettuce comes from, but just as food is fun to play with, it can be fun to play with where it comes from as well.