Easy Asian Slaw Recipe

This easy Asian salad recipe tosses crunchy vegetables in a simple ginger dressing. It’s quick, perfectly easy, and keeps beautifully in the fridge for days.

We’re always happy to add more gut recipes to the blog, and this Asian Salad with Creamy Ginger Dressing is a new favorite. I love the texture the most. Cut the cabbage as in the classic coleslaw, but then peel the carrot into ribbons. It kind of lifts the carrot, adds more crunch, and looks fantastic (just look at the photos).

Serve this easy salad with almost anything. We especially love it with grilled chicken or steak and teriyaki chicken. It’s even fantastic added to pulled pork for a sandwich, but I’ve shared more ideas below.

Main ingredients:

• Cabbage, carrot and bell pepper. Use whatever cabbage you have on hand. We used white cabbage in the photos, but Napa cabbage (like we use for our Napa Kale Salad) is also a great choice. Carrots add color and crunch. For added texture, we clean them with ribbons. Then we add chopped red bell pepper for extra sweetness.
• Green onions and cilantro. The green onions add an oniony flavor without overpowering anything, and the cilantro keeps the salty flavor bright and fresh.
• Ginger sauce. To make an Asian salt sauce, you’ll combine freshly grated ginger (or ginger paste), soy sauce, honey, lime juice, mayonnaise, and plain yogurt. It’s incredibly creamy, but thanks to the lime juice and yogurt, it’s on the lighter side, and definitely not overpowering. Another dressing that would be nice here is our Carrot Ginger Dressing.

Check out the full recipe with measurements below.

How to make an Asian salad

Tip 1: Shred the cabbage for the intestine. You have some easy options. First, you can use a sharp chef’s knife (as seen in our photo below). Simply quarter a head of cabbage, scoop out the core, then finely chop. If you have a food processor with a shredding blade, it also makes incredibly quick work of kale. Finally, a regular vegetable peeler can also be used to shred cabbage into fine shreds.

Tip 2: Peel the carrot into strips. Shred the carrots in our vinaigrette coleslaw with a box grater. For this Asian salad recipe, however, we use a vegetable peeler to shave the lettuce into long, thin strips. They look gorgeous in the bowl and we both love the extra texture.

Tip 3: Make an Asian salad dressing. This sauce is surprisingly simple. You will prepare it properly in a small bowl by simply mixing the ingredients with a spoon. Always taste it before tossing it in with your veggies. You should be able to taste a distinct hint of ginger. If the taste is barely there, add a little more ginger until you do.

Tip 4: Refrigerate for 20 minutes before serving. We rely on this technique for nearly every coleslaw recipe we share. You’ll want to give the sauce some time to properly flavor and soften the vegetables a bit. Mix the dough, then put it in the refrigerator for 20 minutes before serving.

Retention and promotion

You can easily prepare the vegetables and sauce in advance. Slice the cabbage, peel the carrot strips, and chop the pepper, then store them together in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. The dressing can be mixed and stored in a separate container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Because the kale and carrots are so firm, this salad keeps really well in the fridge. Once tossed, it will keep in an airtight container for up to 4 days. The vegetables will soften a little each day as they marinate, but are still delicious.

Since the dressing contains some mayonnaise and yogurt, it is best not to let the salad sit at room temperature for more than 2 hours. If you are serving it outside on a hot afternoon, try to keep the bowl cool and don’t let it sit for more than 1 hour.

Service offers

Thanks to the dressing, this salad adds a lot of flavor to your plate. It’s perfect with grilled or baked chicken, pork chops, glazed salmon and baked salmon. I also especially love it with salmon patties (which are incredibly easy and made with canned salmon). It would be fantastic on shrimp burgers, tucked into all kinds of tacos, and even as a fresh side with pork tenderloin.

On evenings when we’re too tired to cook a big meal, we often pair this salad with a quick protein we have on hand. Since you can keep it in the fridge for a few days, it’s perfect for making a basic weeknight dinner without much effort.