Recipe for Red Cabbage—Sweet ‘n Sour Chopped Salad

Chopped red cabbage salad

I love coleslaw. The sweeter and creamier the better.

I’ve tried lots of different coleslaw/cabbage salad methods, but the recipe here, using some of our newly harvested veggies, is my favorite by far. But first, a little background…

Back in the day, I made a super sweet/super sour coleslaw, with shredded cabbage, carrots, and a few green peppers. The recipe called for equal parts sugar and apple cider vinegar boiled into a near-syrup, so it certainly fit the sweet bill! 

But eating this slaw was sort of like mainlining sugar. The truth is, if I want something sweet, I’ll have cookies/cake/chocolate, etc!

Mayonnaise-y coleslaw, to me, is far tastier. Adding chopped carrots, sweet pickles, sweet onion and halved cherry tomatoes to the cabbage, with some salt and a few tablespoons of sugar in with the mayonnaise, and this combo is a dreamy mix of sweet and creamy.

But almost all mayonnaise is soy-based—I’ve tried all kinds of natural/organic brands, but they all seem to contain some soy. And soy gives me a stomachache.

So I pretty well gave up on mayo-based coleslaw. Last summer, I made a couple of batches of slaw with honey-mustard vinaigrette, and while it was okay, it wasn’t worth writing home about. I find cabbage has a very slight bitterness, and IMO, is not improved by a mustard and vinegar dressing.

My daughter was on a health kick for a while and was actually eating kale. It shouldn’t sound like a big deal, but she’d never before touched greens with a ten-foot pole! She shared a kale salad with us, made with a garlicky balsamic vinaigrette and walnuts, and though I was no huge kale fan, I found this salad’s sweet-sour quality quite tasty.

Even tasty enough to make myself! I started growing kale every summer and would make this salad regularly. I even brought the salad to a few potlucks and folks seemed to like it.

But given the cabbage worm problem (they LOVE kale), kale as a crop is very high maintenance. Schlepping row cover all through the growing season was just one more extra chore I didn't need.

And prepping kale is even more high-maintenance, what with de-stemming the leaves and rolling them up for slicing. Then, since kale doesn’t readily absorb dressing, you have to rub the leaves with a little dressing to soften them, before adding the rest of your dressing.  

Our garden chores at harvest time are non-stop, and a couple of years ago I got to a point where I just didn’t want to spend precious garden time growing, or cooking with kale. Kale and I were done.

This week, I had a head of red cabbage (organic store-bought) I was using for garnishing green salads. However, it would take the rest of the summer to use up the small head! Clearly, I needed to come up with some way to eat it while the cabbage was still fresh.

1st carrots of the summer this week!

I had fresh, crunchy garlic from the garden, a few newly-harvested carrots, and plenty of balsamic vinegar on hand.

Dressing: garlic, equal amounts vinegar and olive oil

Feeling inspired, I reprised my daughter’s recipe, substituting red cabbage for the kale.

Sweet ‘n Sour Chopped Cabbage Salad

Chopped cabbage

A couple of peeled, thinly sliced carrots

Vinaigrette made with a couple of cloves of minced garlic, blended into equal parts balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

Roasted walnuts, chopped, amount to your taste

Mix it all up, add a couple of handfuls of dried cranberries and mix again, then let the salad mellow in the fridge for a couple of hours. Delish!

And this salad is really good for you too! Besides the vitamins from the cabbage/carrots, you’ve got healthy fats from the olive oil and walnuts, and antioxidants from the garlic and cranberries. If you need to restrict your sodium, this salad is flavorful enough without salt. The dried cranberries contribute plenty of sweetness without added sugars.

It’s a make-ahead recipe too. What I like is that after a busy evening of watering/weeding/harvesting veggies, it’s nice not to come inside all tired and hungry for dinner, and also have to prep a bunch of vegetables. And the cabbage stays crunchy and colorful for days.

The salad recipes in the lifestyle magazines seem to be loaded with fresh, strongly flavored herbs like mint and cilantro. I confess, I like things pretty plain. But you can always add your own favorite touches to this salad. Diced celery, sweet peppers and cherry tomatoes will make it even tastier, and you can always sub in roasted almonds or sunflower nuts for the walnuts. 

Hope you give it a try and enjoy this taste of summer!