Pink Cabbage Salad

Red and white cabbage salad in a serving bowl with two spoons

This salad is definitely unconventional. And pink. And delicious. Need I go on? Here’s how you can make some pink cabbage salad of your own, perfect for any summertime occasion.

Yes you heard that right folks – pink salad. No added flavourings or colourings – just cabbage. Cabbage is a vegetable that is often ignored by many in their kitchens, but I believe anyone who tries this salad recipe will buy more cabbage and never look back!

Where did I learn this recipe?

This is a recipe that my husband taught me how to make. Turkish kebab shops are very well known to serve cabbage as part of their wider salad offerings. Whenever we’d get some kebab I’d always eat up the cabbage and leave the rest for him to finish! Whoops. We started requesting ‘just cabbage please’ at our local takeaways. We definitely got some strange looks there.

One day making a BBQ at home he decided to make some cabbage salad of his own, and the rest was history.

Now we make pink cabbage for most occasions, ESPECIALLY in the summertime or alongside BBQs or meat dishes. It goes down a real treat.

The Simple Ingredients:

It’s made up of white and red cabbage. Super simple and no fuss. Add seasonings of salt, malt vinegar and olive oil and enjoy. Olive oil is particularly great and a real favourite of mine for all things salad.

An ingredient I love to include that is often times quite uncommon in supermarkets is pomegranate sauce. It gives a kick to the salad that the vinegar just can’t quite manage on it’s own. This helps the vinegar and really boosts the flavour of the cabbage. It’s something that I would definitely recommend, but is optional of course.

Key Techniques

The techniques are especially important for this recipe. My 3 top tips for this pink salad are listed below:

1. Peel the cabbage

You should totally peel the cabbage, layer by layer, rather than chop it down the middle and put the other half in the fridge. For years we’d chop the cabbage down the middle, only needing to use half, then swore to ourselves that we’d use the other half in a few days to avoid food waste. By day 2 the discarded half would start to stink up our refrigerator and go off very quickly.

By peeling back the layers you keep the integrity of the cabbage intact and it can last much longer – around a week in the fridge! And in a week’s time you’ll be craving this salad again and will remake the recipe. A perfect solution. See how I peel the cabbage below:

2. Dice thinly

Most recipes ask you to dice evenly – this isn’t necessary here. The cabbage can be cut long, short or a mixture of both. What’s most important is that the cabbage is diced as thinly as you can possibly cut it. It becomes much tastier this way and I find that it really soaks up the vinegar more. Much more delicious.

3. Get your hands in

When mixing you should really get your hands in there. Scrunch it up, crush it up – use all of your strength. The more you squeeze the cabbage and mix it around the more the colours between purple and white will mix with the seasoning to create that glorious pink colour. Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty a little! I use disposable gloves most of the time, because the colour stains your hand very easily.

Pink Cabbage Salad

This salad is definitely unconventional. And pink. And delicious. Need I go on? Here's how you can make some pink cabbage salad of your own, perfect for any summertime occasion.
Prep Time15 minutes
Course: Salad, Side Dish
Cuisine: Mediterranean
Keyword: Appetizer recipe, Cabbage recipe, Cold appetizers, Mediterranean food, Mediterranean meze, Mediterranean olive oil, Meze, Starters recipe, Turkish food, Turkish meze
Servings: 4 side servings

Ingredients

  • 240 g chopped red cabbage (about half of the cabbage)
  • 240 g chopped white cabbage (about half of the cabbage)
  • 1 tbsp malt vinegar
  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 lemon
  • 1-2 tbsp pomegranate sauce (optional)

Instructions

  • Peel back layers of both red and white cabbage, leaving half the cabbage behind.
  • Dice the cabbage leaves thinly. Combine both cabbage colours in a large mixing bowl.
  • Squeeze lemon juice into the cabbage bowl. Add vinegar, oil, salt and pomegranate sauce (if desired).
  • Mix by hand, scrunching up the cabbage as you mix. Continue until colour becomes pink and seasonings are spread over the salad evenly. Enjoy!

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