Spicy Mexican Slaw with Lime and Cilantro (Video)

This Spicy Mexican Slaw is a salad I make over and over, and it’s low-carb, gluten-free, South Beach Diet friendly, vegan, and it could even be Paleo or Whole 30 with the right mayo and hot sauce.Use the Diet-Type Index to find more recipes like this one.

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Spicy Mexican Slaw with Lime and Cilantro!

When I shared the Low-Carb Slow Cooker Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas that all my recipe testers swooned over, I recommended serving it with this Spicy Mexican Slaw with Lime and Cilantro, andthis is a salad I’ve been crazy over for years. It’s been overdue for a photo make-over for quite a while now, but that hasn’t hurt the popularity of this delicious spicy slaw.

This recipe has such a perfect combination of ingredients that when I first tried the salad in 2008, after one bite I knew I’d be making it over and over again. I spotted the recipe in Fine Cooking Annual 2008, and it immediately appealed to mewith an ingredient list that included cabbage, cilantro, mayo, and lime. I did adapt the recipe a bit, and since I like my cabbage salads crunchy, I completely ignored the recipe instructions to salt and drain the cabbage.

I’ve made this quite a bit for family parties and wedding showers, with one bowl with cilantro and another bowl (for the cilantro-haters) with lots of thinly sliced green onion replacing the cilantro. I’ve used  Sriracha Sauce for the spicy kick, but it’s Green Tabasco Sauce that I use most often, although any hot sauce you like can be used. If you like cabbage salads at all, I urge you to try this salad; I bet you’ll love it just as much as I do.

Whisk together the mayo, lime juice, and hot sauce to make the dressing. (Start with smaller amounts of lime juice and hot sauce and taste it until it seems perfect to you.) Thinly slice the green and red cabbage. (This is easiest and you’ll get best results with a mandoline slicer.) Chop green onions and cilantro and mix with the cabbage, then stir in just enough dressing to moisten the slaw, season with salt or Vege-Sal to taste, and devour!

This is best freshly made, but I’ve eaten leftovers for breakfast many times after they’d been in the fridge overnight, not minding at all that the red cabbage turns the salad pink when it sits. If you want to plan for leftovers, you can only add dressing to the amount you’ll eat and store the leftover cabbage and dressing separately.

Going Crazy Over Cabbage Salad:

Ridiculously Easy Blue Cheese Coleslaw ~ Kalyn’s Kitchen
Spicy Cabbage Salad~Viet World Kitchen
Warm Red Cabbage Salad with Bacon and Goat Cheese~ Kalyn’s Kitchen
Peanutty Coleslaw~Everybody Loves Sandwiches
Red Cabbage and Chicken Asian Salad with Tangy Cilantro Dressing~ Kalyn’s Kitchen

Weekend Food Prep:

This recipe has been added to a new category called Weekend Food Prep  to help you find recipes you can prep or cook on the weekend and eat during the week!

Print Recipe

Spicy Mexican Slaw with Lime and Cilantro

Yield: 4 servings

Total Time: 20 minutes

Prep Time: 20 minutes

This Spicy Mexican Slaw is a salad that I make all the time.

Ingredients:

Salad Ingredients

• 4 cups thinly sliced green cabbage
• 2 cups thinly sliced red cabbage (You can use all green or all red cabbage.)
• 2 green onions, thinly sliced, or more
• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro, or more (If you’re not a cilantro fan just use more green onion.)

Dressing Ingredients

• 4 T mayo (or a little more if you like your salad with lots of dressing)
• 3 T fresh lime juice; more or less to taste (If you’re not crazy about sour flavors, start with a smaller amount and add more to the dressing until it tastes good to you.)
• 1/2 teaspoon hot sauce, or to taste (Start with a small amount, then taste the dressing and add more until it’s as spicy as you prefer. I like this best with Green Tabasco Sauce, but I’ve made it with Sriracha sauce many times. Any hot sauce will work, but hot sauce that’s orange will turn the cabbage pink if it’s refrigerated overnight.)
• salt to taste (I used Vege-Sal which I greatly prefer over regular salt for this salad.)

Directions:

1. In small bowl or measuring cup, whisk together, mayo, lime juice, and hot sauce. (Start with less than the full amount of lime juice and hot sauce and keep adding until you have the desired blend of sour/hot flavor.)
2. Thinly slice cabbage, using a mandoline slicer  if you have one.
3. Slice green onions.
4. Wash, dry and chop cilantro. (I use a Mini salad spinner to wash herbs and spin them dry.)
5. Combine cabbage, green onions and cilantro in large salad bowl.
6. Use a wooden spoon to mix dressing into cabbage mixture.
7. Season to taste with salt and serve immediately, or chill for a few hours.
8. This salad will keep well overnight in the refrigerator, but the lime juice will cause the red cabbage to bleed color and turn the salad slightly pink. If you’re making extra you might want to use all green cabbage, although I didn’t mind the pink color at all when I ate the leftovers!
9. Another good strategy if you’re not cooking for many people is to chop the cabbage and green onion and mix the dressing for the full amount and store in the fridge, then chop cilantro and stir salad together in smaller amounts as you’re going to eat it.

Recipe adapted slightly from Fine Cooking Annual 2008.

All images and text ©Kalyn Denny for Kalyn's Kitchen.

Low-Carb Diet / Low-Glycemic Diet / South Beach Diet Suggestions:
This salad is a perfect side dish for most any low-carb eating plans, including the South Beach Diet, and it’s also gluten-free, meatless, vegan, and can be Paleo or Whole 30 with approved mayo and hot sauce.

Find More Recipes Like This One:
Use the Recipes by Diet Type photo index pages to find more recipes suitable for a specific eating plan. You might also like to Follow Kalyn’s Kitchen on Pinterest to see all the good recipes I’m sharing there.

Nutritional Information?
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