If you’re looking for a refreshing summer side dish to add to your picnic, look no further than poolside sesame slaw. The recipe is simple and uses ingredients that are easily accessible at any grocery store or market. You can also use this dip as an appetizer with breadsticks if you want something easy!
The “creamy sesame coleslaw” is a refreshing side dish. It’s perfect for poolside or summertime!
I’m really thrilled to announce the start of Smitten Kitchen’s slaw season. In the summer, nothing beats a crisp, lettuce-free, wilt-resistant salad, and I don’t mean cabbage smothered in mayo. It might be broccoli or cauliflower, finely chopped and pickled veggies for sandwiches and tacos, and honestly, if it’s a vegetable, I’m convinced I could slaw it despite no one asking.
I ate a salad like this** beside a pool last month in Florida (oh, vacation, how I miss you), and although I swear on a stack of cookbooks that whatever you serve for me as a guest in your house is simply the most wonderful thing I’ve ever eaten, I’m always thankful for it and uncritical of it… Restaurants are exempt from this rule. I’m sure I could do a better job. So, I went home and experimented with a 2:4:1 ratio of cabbage to vegetables to crunchy things, as well as three different dressings (one more sesame-peanut sauce, one more nuoc cham, and one more ginger-scallion herby mixture), and came to the conclusion that the best dressing for this salad already exists — the miso-sesame dressing on this Miso Sweet Potato Broccoli Bowl that I first used on the Sugar Snap Slaw in The Smitten
If desired, you may add protein at this point. We coated chicken thigh cutlets with a honey-dark soy sauce mixture and grilled them before thinly slicing them, but I believe tofu would work well here as well (either brushed and grilled the same way, or raw, since it doesn’t need to be cooked). This salad, like the beach bean salad, is designed to be portable, since it will keep for hours, if not days, provided the dressing is kept separate. It wants to join you on your vacation this weekend, sitting by a gorgeous blue pool (just tell me what time to come) and freeing you from concession stand lineups – which, in my opinion, are only appropriate for funnel cake.
* Well, I *was* looking forward to the start of slaw season, which was supposed to be yesterday. But, like millions of other parents across the country, I had to drop my 6-year-old off at elementary school yesterday and pretend that today was any other day, not thinking about the knot of doom and dread in my stomach at the prospect that she might not return, or my son, who was away on a school trip he’d been looking forward to for months. I can’t comprehend it, and I don’t want to, nor should anybody else. I don’t think I need to tell you that America has a problem that is exceptional in both its frequency and our incapacity to address it. I don’t think I need to tell you that the fact that we’ve had more mass shootings this year than days in the year is unacceptable. It seems to me that there are several sound (NYT) options available. If you agree, there are a few sites where you may donate: This article mentions Everytown for Gun Safety, Sandy Hook Promise, and many more.
** I know this salad is occasionally referred to as an Asian Chicken Salad or something similar, but I believe it’s worth noting that there’s been a lot of resistance against it in recent years (NYT, an open article), since the inclusion of miso or ginger doesn’t make it a 48-country continent.
Previously
Cranberry Pecan Bread, 6 months ago 1 year ago: Chicken with Soy Glaze 2 years ago: Bolognese with Just the Right Amount of Tomatoes 3 years ago: Fluffy Pancake, Austrian Torn Chilaquiles Brunch Casserole, 4 years ago 5 years ago: Upside-Down Rhubarb Spice Cake Perfect Garlic Bread, Shaved Asparagus Frittata, and Palm Springs Date Shake from 6 years ago 7 years ago: Crispy Broccoli with Lemon and Garlic, Potato Scallion and Kale Cakes, and Salted Chocolate Chunk Cookies Blue Sky Bran Muffins and Fresh Spinach Pasta from 8 years ago Spring Vegetable Potstickers and Essential Raised Waffles from 9 years ago Risotto with bacon, egg, and leeks from ten years ago 11 years ago: Aleppo Sour Cream Cornbread with Lemon Ribboned Asparagus Salad Radicchio, Apple, and Pear Salad, New York Cheesecake, and Shakshuka 12 years ago 14 years ago: Chocolate Walnut Cookies + More Flourless Dessert, Almond Cake with Strawberry-Rhubarb Compote 13 years ago: Black Bread with Ranch Rugelach Corniest Corn Muffins with Pineapple Upside-Down Cake 15 years ago
Sesame Slaw for the Pool
I wanted this salad to be as adaptable as your refrigerator. I’ve prepared it with all or part of the veggies listed below, but thinly sliced fresh asparagus, radishes, barely-cooked green beans, and other vegetables would be fantastic. You may add salted cashews, sunflower seeds, or even roasted black and white sesame seeds for crunch (I’d use just a few teaspoons). We used 1 pound of boneless skinless chicken thighs for protein, coated them with a 1:1 combination of dark soy sauce and honey, grilled them, and thinly sliced them, but you could also use tofu for a fully vegan salad.
Dressing
-
- 1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced
- 1 minced medium garlic clove
- 2 tablespoons tahini, properly mixed
- 2 tblsp miso blanco
- 1 teaspoon of honey
- a quarter cup of rice vinegar
- 2 tablespoons sesame oil, roasted
- 2 tbsp olive oil or a neutral oil
- To taste, season with salt and Sriracha.
Slaw
- 4 cups sliced carrots, cucumber, celery, bell peppers, sugar snap peas, and/or snow peas
- 2 cups red, green, savoy, or napa cabbage, thinly sliced
- 1 cup salted peanuts, chopped
- 1 cup scallion, thinly sliced (white and green parts)
- If desired, a handful of chopped fresh cilantro
- Miso-Sesame Dressing (about 1 cup) (above)
- 1 pound thinly sliced grilled chicken thighs (optional, see Note)
Make the dressing: In a blender, combine all of the dressing ingredients and mix until smooth, scraping down the sides once. You may alternatively hand-whisk the ingredients in a bowl, but make sure to use enough force to smooth out the chunky components. Taste the ingredients and adjust them to your liking.
Assemble the salad: Toss all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl with half of the dressing, adding more or all of the remaining dressing to taste. If necessary, season with salt and pepper. For added appeal, top with reserved peanuts, scallions, and herbs. Enjoy it immediately away or put it in a cooler and take it someplace nice to eat it in a few hours.
Prepare ahead of time: The dressing and chopped veggies (excluding the cilantro, which may wilt quickly) may be refrigerated separately in the fridge for up to 5 days.
A “poolside sesame slaw” is a dish that is traditionally made with cabbage, carrots, and sesame seeds. It can be served cold or hot. This recipe uses apple cider vinegar as the dressing instead of mayonnaise. Reference: asian coleslaw with apple cider vinegar.
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