We’ve got several Asian style salads on Our Best Bites and I love them all for different reasons! Here’s a love-list for this particular Asian Cabbage Salad:
- It’s flexible.You can toss anything in it that you think would be good.Whatever veggies you happen to have on hand. It’s one of those ‘clean out the fridge’ salads.
- It keeps well.Lettuce salads get wilted and gross the longer they sit, but this salad only gets better, which makes it a great option for a party, potluck, or picnic.
- It’s easy to make a huge batch or just enough for two.
- It’s quick.It starts with a pre-packaged bag of coleslaw, so you save time chopping.Plus you can prepare everything ahead of time and just throw it together when you’re ready.
- It’s healthy. News flash: Not all salads are healthy. This one is full of fresh vegetables and the dressing has very little oil (pretty rare) so it’s very low-calorie.
I love a great short-cut salad, so for this one you’ll grab a bag of that pre-shredded cabbage mix at the store.
Then you’ll add a bunch of fresh vegetables to it. I use celery, bell pepper, onion, cucumber, and snap peas but you can literally toss anything in here you like!
Just toss all of the salad ingredients together, and this part can totally be done ahead of time.
The super simple dressing has only a small amount of oil in it and it can be made ahead of time as well. When it’s ready, just toss everything together. It always feels like there’s not quite enough dressing at first, but the trick is to let this salad sit and marinate for about 20 minutes or so (longer won’t hurt it either!) and it all comes together.
Finish it off with some toasted almonds and sesame seeds right before serving.
You can eat this plain as a great side dish or add chicken to it for a main-dish meal.
I love it with grilled Asian BBQ Chicken!
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Asian Cabbage Salad
- Yield: 4-6 Main Dish, 8-10 Sides
Description
An incredibly light, but filling cabbage-based salad filled with fresh veggies.
Ingredients
1 14-16 oz bag coleslaw mix
1 rib celery, sliced
1/2 cucumber, sliced
1 small handful sugar snap peas (about 20 baby ones)
1/2 red bell pepper, sliced
1/4 of a small red onion, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
1/3 cup slivered or sliced toasted almonds
Optional: 1 1/2 C cooked, shredded or diced chicken
Dressing:
2 T canola oil
2 T cider vinegar
1/4 C seasoned rice wine vinegar
2 T sugar (or equivalent of sugar substitute)
1 t kosher salt
2 t soy sauce
1/4 t garlic powder, or one small garlic clove, minced
1/4 t black pepper
1/2 t sesame oil
Instructions
Instructions:
Begin by making dressing. Combine all ingredients in a sealed jar and shake Store in the fridge until ready to use.
Place all salad ingredients in a bowl
For best results, pour on the dressing and toss to coat 20 minutes before serving. When you pour the dressing on you might think it’s not quite enough, but just wait. When it sits and marinates, it combines with the veggies and draws out liquid and there will be more than plenty of dressing after it sits.
Right before serving mix in toasted almonds and sesame seeds.
Questions & Reviews
This was perfect! So delicious! Thank you!
I’m so excited to try this recipe. I have a question about printing your recipes. The last few I have printed have a facebook, twitter, pintrest box on the left side of the screen that are printing on top of the recipe. Any ideas how to fix this so I can read the recipe? Thank you for the great recipes!
weird! I’ll look into it Asap- thanks for letting us know!
something is up with your printer plug in. I use Chrome and the buttons for facebook, twitter and pintrist show up on the print page – blocking the ingredients amounts. Please fix this!! I also tried to contact you from your contact button at the bottom of the page and it did nothing.
thanks for letting us know! We’ll look into it asap!
Okay it looks like I’m commenting 10 years too late, but I just discovered this recipe and it is so delicious! Perfect crunch! Thank you Sara!
Hope you are having a wonderful Labor Day weekend with your families. I wanted to stop by the blog and thank you for this recipe…it is my ‘go-to’ Asian salad and it’s page in the cookbook has a permanent sticky note attached so I can go to it quickly. But for the life of me when I’m craving it I never remember that it is supposed to be with a bag of coleslaw mix and always come home with a huge head of Napa cabbage instead. It still turns out amazingly delicious and by changing out the soy sauce for coconut aminos it is ‘safe’ for my whole family to enjoy. Thank you so much!
I’m so happy you love it- thanks for the kind words!
This salad is one of my most favorite! I have made it many times and I cannot get enough! So delicious. The snap peas are essential- don’t leave them out if you can at all help it! Thanks for a great recipe!!
This was REALLY great. Thanks for sharing!
Just made this last night. Loved it! I didn’t have sesame seeds so I tossed in some roasted sunflower seeds instead and it turned out yummy! Thanks for all the delicious recipes!
Just made this salad and it is oh so tasty! I made it for my Grandpa’s birthday and decided to have a big bowl of it before I brought it over to him. Hope he likes it as much as I do! Thanks for all the fantastic recipes. These past 2 weeks almost every night I am making something from your recipe index! Thank you thank you!!!
I saw this salad in the cookbook and it looks amazing!
I’m going to try it for dinner this week and was wondering how crucial the sesame oil is to the dressing. I have never used sesame oil and don’t know what I’d use it for again (besides this salad) and figured since it was only 1/2 tsp. – maybe I could just leave it out? Or substitute something else?
What should I do?
Thanks!
Sesame oil has a strong flavor, so the little bit really does add a lot of flavor to the overall salad. You could probably leave it out and it would still taste great; it would just be missing that flavor component. If you do decide to buy the sesame oil, we have TONS of recipes that call for it, and one little bottle will last in your pantry for a long long time 🙂
Had a head of cabbage I didn’t know what to do with. I realized I had all the ingredients for this salad so I made it for dinner! It was delicious! I added a couple of shredded carrots and doubled most of the veggies to help empty my veggie drawer. Thanks for the fabulous recipe!
Amazing. Period.
Thanks for an amazing, healthy, quick, and easy recipe!
Delicious! Thank you for sharing, and thanks for including how many WW points it is. I love how quick and easy this salad is to put together.
This is another really yummy Asian salad that my sister-in-law made up. It is a big more time consuming but worth it:
http://ashleysyummyrecipes.blogspot.com/2008/07/asian-salad-aka-thai-coleslaw.html
Just made this for lunch. Very light and refreshing. Thanks for the recipe.
Yummy yum yum yum! I tried coming up with my own Asian salad recipe and it was a flop. We love, love, love this salad and will be eating a lot more of it in the future. (We added mandarin oranges & wonton strips on top, too.) Thanks for the delish recipe!
Thanks for the info Juliann!
Since you didnt post it I figured out the WW Point Plus points and for the dinner sized portion (4 servings per recipe) with 1 cup chicken it would be 5 points. I cant wait to have it for lunch this week. I look forward to more WW friendly recipes
Oh no Brooke! lol Your comment made me laugh- thanks for warning everyone else! haha You'll have to try it again with chicken because it's awesome!
Alert. Alert. Don't think that this delicious salad might be good if you substitute canned salmon for chicken. I'm pretty sure canned salmon is never good and that Dr. Oz lied to me. I thought it might be ok and I was totally wrong. It was so sad because the rest of the salad all looked and smelled delicous until I botched it with the fish. Just a warning that I'm sure no one else would even think of doing. I am, however, the worst cook in America! Here is a quote from my husband "It tastes like making out with a trout!" But I will try again using chicken this time!