Crunchy cabbage and edamame salad
Units
Temperature
Servings
Ingredients
The salad
- 400 g white or pointed cabbage, shredded as finely as you can manage rounded
- 150 g red cabbage, for colour, and added at the end so it does not bleed rounded
- 250 g frozen edamame, podded, boiled 4 minutes and cooled rounded
- 150 g carrot, coarsely grated or cut in matchsticks rounded
- 60 g spring onions rounded
- 25 g fresh coriander rounded
- 80 g roasted peanuts, roughly chopped and added at the table, not before rounded
- 8 g fine salt, for drawing water out of the cabbage first rounded
Peanut lime dressing
- 80 g peanut butter, smooth and unsweetened rounded
- 50 ml lime juice rounded
- 40 ml soy sauce, tamari to keep it gluten-free rounded
- 30 ml rice vinegar rounded
- 20 ml toasted sesame oil rounded
- 60 ml warm water rounded
- 20 g fresh ginger, grated rounded
- 15 ml sriracha rounded
Method
Method
- Salt the shredded white cabbage and leave it 20 minutes, then squeeze it out firmly. This is what makes the salad keep. It draws out the water that would otherwise leak into the dressing overnight.
- Boil the edamame 4 minutes, drain and cool under cold water.
- Whisk the dressing, adding the water last until it pours thickly. Peanut butter seizes exactly like tahini and loosens the same way.
- Toss everything except the peanuts and red cabbage, rest 30 minutes.
- Add the red cabbage and peanuts just before serving, so one does not stain and the other does not go soft.
Why cabbage rather than leaves
A leaf salad is finished within an hour of being dressed. Lettuce cells collapse on contact with salt and acid and there is no way around it.
Cabbage is structurally different: thicker cell walls, far less water, and it takes acid as a light pickle rather than as damage. Dressed cabbage is better after two hours than after two minutes, and still good after two days, which is what makes this a genuine meal-prep salad rather than one that merely survives.
Notes
- Salt and squeeze the cabbage. Skipping it gives you a puddle by morning. It takes 20 minutes of doing nothing.
- Peanuts go in at the table. Anything crunchy added early is soft by lunch. Keep them in a separate twist of paper for a lunchbox.
- Red cabbage bleeds. Added early it turns the whole bowl a uniform mauve, which tastes the same and looks much worse.
- It keeps three days dressed. The coriander goes dull after one, so add half fresh if you can.
Ingredient substitutions
- Edamame are sold frozen and podded in most German supermarkets. Frozen peas work at the same weight with less protein and more sweetness.
- Peanut butter can be almond butter or tahini. Tahini makes it a Levantine-leaning salad and pairs better with lemon than lime.
- For gluten-free, use tamari. Ordinary soy sauce is brewed with wheat.