Recipes Cooking

Turkish Red Cabbage Salad

We ate this salad a lot in Turkey. Whenever you ordered any döner (rotisserie grilled meat) meal in Turkey, the odds were about 9 out of 10 that some version of this would arrive on the side.

The other main salad consisted of chopped lettuce with chopped cucumbers and chopped (greenhouse, at this time of year) tomatoes, and which was called - wait for it - chopped salad. For me, the out of season tomatoes made it meh, and the cucumbers made it inedible so I would always try to be sure we were getting this salad, instead. Its really very simple, as you can see - three main ingredients. The cabbage is softened and marinated in lemon and oil, which is what takes it from being three raw veggies put on a plate to being a salad I could eat every day and never tire of.

The marinated cabbage will keep, covered, in the fridge for several days, so it can be added to your salad whenever you want it, making it very convenient. You can also eat it all by itself. Actually, Ive got some sauerkraut in the fridge and Im going to try mixing it with that... the technique for this is kind of like the way sauerkraut is started, but without the fermentation.

In Turkey this was always made with romaine (Cos) lettuce, but of course if you are making this here, now, it will have to be hydroponic lettuce if you want it local. In the late summer and fall, though, you can make it with romaine. 

4 to 6 servings
2 hours - 20 minutes prep time


Prepare the Red Cabbage:
4 cups finely shredded red cabbage
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
the juice of 1/2 lemon

Trim the white core from the cabbage and chop the rest finely; you will need about half of a small head. Put it in a bowl and massage in the salt thoroughly. Turn the cabbage into a strainer and leave to drain in the sink for about half an hour to 45 minutes. Rinse and drain it well.

Toss the cabbage with the olive oil and lemon juice. Cut the lemon in half lengthwise; then the other half can be used as wedges to be passed with the rest of the salad.

Finish the Salad:
1 small head Bibb (Boston) lettuce
OR 4 cups chopped romaine lettuce
2 cups grated carrots
1/2 of a large lemon, cut into 4 wedges
extra-virgin olive oil
salt & pepper

Wash the lettuce and drain it well. Chop it quite finely and arrange it on either a large serving platter or individual salad plates. Peel and grate the carrot and arrange a pile of it on or next to the lettuce, along with a similar pile of the prepared red cabbage.

Pass the salad with extra olive oil and wedges of lemon, as well as salt and pepper. 



Last year at this time I made Cranberry Marshmallows.