Name: Coleslaw
Prep time: 10 min
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 0.5 head Cabbage; 1 Carrot; 1 handful Red cabbage; 0.25 Onion; 4 tbsp Mayonnaise; 1 tbsp Vinegar (or lemon juice); 1 tbsp Sugar; 1 tsp Dijon mustard; 0.5 tsp Salt; 1 to taste Black pepper

Ingredients

4servings

Cabbage · ~400g, finely shredded0.5 head
Carrot · shredded or grated1
Red cabbage · optional, for color1 handful
Onion · optional, very thin0.25
Dressing
Mayonnaise4 tbsp
Vinegar (or lemon juice)1 tbsp
Sugar1 tbsp
Dijon mustard · optional1 tsp
Salt0.5 tsp
Black pepper1 to taste

Steps

Finely shred the cabbage, carrot, and optional red cabbage and onion (a mandoline helps).
⏲ 7 min
Toss the shredded veg with a little salt, rest 10 minutes, then lightly squeeze out the liquid (keeps it crisp longer — optional).
⏲ 10 min
Whisk the mayo, vinegar, sugar, mustard, salt, and pepper into a dressing.
⏲ 2 min
Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss to coat evenly.
⏲ 1 min
Chill at least 30 minutes so the flavors meld.
⏲ 30 min
Taste, adjust, and give it one more toss just before serving.
⏲ 30 sec

Variations

Vinegar-based: Skip the mayo for a lighter vinaigrette slaw.
Apple & cranberry: Add fruit for a sweet-tart, crunchy slaw.
Jalapeño & lime: A Mexican-style spicy, zingy version.
Yogurt: Swap some mayo for Greek yogurt to lighten it.

Tips

Shred finely so the dressing coats well and the texture is right.
Salt and drain the veg to keep it crisp and the slaw from going watery.
Balance sweet and tangy — adjust sugar and vinegar to taste.
Let it rest 30 min to overnight (but not too long or it softens).
Perfect alongside burgers, BBQ, and fried chicken.

More detail and the reasons why (4)

Most dressed salads are dressed at the last possible moment, and this one asks for half an hour. It salts and drains its vegetables first, which stops the failure at the source (emulsions). The failure is the one that threatens Olivier salad: mayonnaise folded into lukewarm ingredients breaks because the fat softens and the droplets coalesce, and leaves a puddle in the bowl by the next day.
Two things buy the time, and both are finished before the dressing arrives. One is step two, the salting and squeezing. Salting a salad in advance gives a puddle on the plate (salt and seasoning) — but that is osmosis happening later, and here it has already been run to completion and the water thrown away. The other is that the dressing is a bought emulsion: thick and stable at room temperature, and depending on nothing in the bowl.
Som tam is the far end and Salade niçoise is the middle. Som tam has no oil at all, so its dressing has no body to survive being watered down and goes on at the last second. Niçoise salts its tomatoes for ten minutes and puts that liquid into the vinaigrette, and still has to be served at once: left standing, the lettuce pickles and collapses. One mechanism, three answers, and which is available depends on what the dressing is made of.
"Not too long or it softens" is where the trick runs out. Draining takes the free water; the cell walls are still there, and salt plus time eventually takes those down too. So the window is closed at both ends — half an hour for the dressing to reach every cut face, and somewhere past a night the crispness the whole method was protecting is gone anyway.

The basics behind this dish

Cooking basics →

More of the same kind

Salad →

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