Dry Slaw

Background: I always keep dry slaw on hand. I don’t know when I picked up this super handy ingredient. I think over time, if you make enough fish tacos, you just always kind of have 95% of a cabbage or two in your crisper. Gotta find some other things to do with it. And I have. It has served me well in so many dishes. This is not a recipe. This is 100% for sure not cooking. Honestly, it’s barely a move. But it’s a crucial move in so many other moves that I’m going to devote some pixels to it. Here are the moves:

1. Get a Dexter Russell 9″ Offset Bread Sandwich Knife if you don’t already have one.
2. Buy a regular cabbage.
3. Buy a red cabbage.
4. Buy a 5 pound bag of carrots.
5. Get a handful of cilantro.
6. Remove the ugliest outermost leaves from both cabbages and cut both cabbages in half and quarter one half of each cabbage.
7. Take a quarter of the cabbage and cut out the core. Reserve for pickling, compost, chickens, or whatever.
8. Start shaving the quarter of cabbage as thinly as you possibly can.
9. Do steps 7 and 8 for the other quarter of cabbage.
10. Mix the two piles of shredded cabbage in a large fridge-safe container.
11. Peel and grate a carrot with the largest grater you have until you have a pile that looks like the amount you want in the slaw. Mix that in.
12. Chiffonade the cilantro (to the extent that you can chiffonade cilantro) and mix that into the slaw. Reserve the stems for soups and sauces.
13. Do not add anything else. You can subtract the cilantro if you must, but don’t add anything.

Why it works:

1. This knife changed my life. I got my first one when I was working in a college cafeteria full of Dexter Russel Sanisafe knives 24 years ago. Next to a matching chef’s knife, it’s my go to for myriad tasks. It actually makes me a little sad when I go to reach for it and both of the ones I have are in the sink full of dirty dishes.
2. Cabbage is cheap. Like really cheap.
3. Red cabbage is slightly more expensive for some reason. But it’s still cheap.
4. You won’t use all these carrots for the slaw probably. But now you have carrots.
5. Cilantro is also cheap as far as fresh herbs go.
6. You want to prep about a quarter of the cabbage a week, depending on how many people you are feeding. Leave the rest intact. A slight brownness might start to cover the cut side as it oxidizes. Cut it off and compost it. The rest of the cabbage is perfectly fine. It should last at least a month this way. Use the cut quarter before the cut half.
7. I use my cabbage cores and the outermost leaves I peeled off to jumpstart the process when I’m making lacto pickled peppers. (Lactobacillus lives on cabbage leaves.)
8. The Dexter Russell 9″ Offset Bread Sandwich Knife is key to slicing this as thin as possible.
9. As you are doing the mundane task of slicing cabbage, notice how the the serrations of the Dexter Russell 9″ Offset Bread Sandwich Knife grip the waxy surface of the cabbage perfectly. Challenge yourself to make it thinner and thinner and thinner. It’s fine if you have different thicknesses.
10. I use a large plastic takeout bowl with a lid that I yoinked while cleaning up the catering after an event. If that bowl has buttered noodles in it (which it often does), I’ll use two take-out ramen bowls with lids. Put a dry paper towel on the bottom and a slightly damp one on the top.
11. If you don’t like the way the carrots ooze water when grated, you can just keep peeling the carrot with the peeler for a different result. I’ll show that in another move.
12. Cilantro isn’t the easiest to Chiffonade, but if you lay all the leaves flat on top of one another and roll them up, it’s easier to get strips from the leaves.
13. Obviously you can add anything you want at whatever time you want. The reason I don’t is because it will keep longer dry and if I add other things, I can’t take it in as many directions. If you dress it, then all you have is coleslaw. And, honestly, how much coleslaw do you really want? This move is all about the mods.

Mods:

1. Use the Green Apple Tartar Sauce to dress the slaw and you have a nice side to take to a BBBQ or a great addition to a fish sandwich.
2. Toss with sesame oil, sesame seeds, rice wine vinegar and and soy sauce and you have a nice side for Pork Tenderloin.
3. Add thai basil leaves and mint leaves and use it to garnish Southeast Asian dishes.
4. A squeeze of lime works in almost every iteration of this.
5. It works both dry and wet on tacos, depending on the taco filling. I like it dressed for things like crispy shrimp tacos and dryish (maybe with a squeeze of lime and chili flakes) on things like pulled pork tacos.
6. Dress with a sweetish slaw dressing and it goes great on a West Virginia-style hot dog.
7. Tossed with a vinegar-based dressing, it works well in any chopped or shredded BBQ sandwich.