Spicy Rainbow Slaw

This healthy Spicy Rainbow Slaw with a tangy lemon yogurt dressing is made with red and green cabbage, bell peppers, watermelon radishes, jicama, and a touch of jalapeno complements any summer meal — it’s cooling, crunchy, and crazy colorful!

I adore coleslaw — it’s right up there with salsa as one of the most perfect foods, especially in hot weather.  It’s as healthy as it is versatile, and I think it adds that perfect touch to so many summer classics, from hot dogs and burgers to fish tacos and grilled kabobs.  I had a bit of fun with this one, hunting down the most day-glo veggies I could find for a rainbow effect.

Every batch will be a different color scheme, depending on what you find at your store or farmer’s market!

I employed a combination of shredding techniques depending on the particular veggies.  I used my food processor with the slicing blade for some (red cabbage) and the shredding blade for others (carrots, jicama.)  I used a sharp knife to finely shred my Savoy cabbage, watermelon radishes, and peppers.  I used my mandoline slicer to get ultra thin slices of onion.  You don’t need to use all these methods, a good sharp knife will do the trick for everything too.

TIP:  Veggies that contain a lot of moisture, like onions or peppers, are better thinly sliced than grated.  Grating releases too much water and makes them mushy.

My dressing is a combination of yogurt, buttermilk, lemon, and poppy seeds.  It’s skinny, tangy, and delicious.

TIP:  Add a bit of celery seed to the salad for a classic coleslaw flavor.

I’m highly recommending this slaw, I brought it to a barbecue yesterday and everybody raved.  The bright pink watermelon radish was especially intriguing.

TIP:  Stay away from red beets in this slaw.  While they’re delicious and can certainly be shredded and eaten raw, they will bleed their color and turn the salad into a uniform shade of pink.  If you want to use beets, use a golden, or chioga variety instead.

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4.2 from 5 votes

Spicy Rainbow Slaw

Ingredients

• red cabbage thinly sliced
• Savoy cabbage thinly sliced
• red white, or sweet onion, thinly sliced
• jicama finely julienned
• watermelon radish finely julienned
• carrots shredded
• red green, yellow, or orange bell peppers, finely julienned
• 1 jalapeno minced, seeds and all
• 1 tsp celery seed

Lemon Yogurt Poppy Seed Dressing

• 4 Tbsp Greek yogurt
• 4 Tbsp cultured buttermilk
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp poppy seeds
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

• Use whatever combination of veggies you like, to make about 4 cups of slaw. Mix the shredded veggies in a large bowl and toss to combine them.
• Whisk together the dressing and taste to adjust any of the seasonings. Pour on the dressing and toss really well to distribute it. Refrigerate for at least a couple of hours before serving.

notes:

• Don’t shy away from the buttermilk in this Spicy Rainbow Slaw, it’s low in fat and packed with tangy flavor.
• Coleslaw does fine for a few hours in the refrigerator, in fact it gets better as it sits for a while, allowing the dressing flavors to penetrate the raw veggies.

don’t forget to pin this amazing Rainbow Slaw!

used in this post…(the photos are clickable)