Low-Carb Spicy Mexican Slaw with Lime and Cilantro (Video)

Low-Carb Spicy Mexican Slaw with Lime and Cilantro is a perfect low-carb side dish for Mexican food, and this is salad I make over and over. Use Salad Recipes to find more low-carb salad recipes like this one.

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Spicy Mexican Slaw with Lime and Cilantro!

Cinco de Mayo is coming up this weekend, and if you’re making any kind of Mexican dinner to celebrate I want to remind you about this Low-Carb Spicy Mexican Slaw with Lime and Cilantro that‘s absolutely perfect for a low-carb side dish for Mexican food.  I’m not sure I could ever pick my number one favorite salad recipe, but Spicy Mexican Slaw is a salad I’ve been crazy over for years.

This recipe has so many of my favorite ingredients that when I first tried the salad (in 2008!) after one bite I knew I’d be making it over and over again. Since then this has become a regular offering 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. And I always use plenty of Green Tabasco Sauce for a spicy kick, 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 make this for Weekend Food Prep, you can store the leftover cabbage and dressing separately and add dressing to each serving right before you eat it. And I wouldn’t mind a bit having this in the fridge for a quick lunch!

Going Crazy Over Cabbage Salad:

Ridiculously Easy Blue Cheese Coleslaw ~ Kalyn’s Kitchen
Vietnamese Cold Chicken Salad ~ A Spicy Perspective
Warm Red Cabbage Salad with Bacon and Goat Cheese ~ Kalyn’s Kitchen
Hoisin Snap Pea and Red Cabbage Slaw ~ Cookin’ Canuck
Red Cabbage and Chicken Asian Salad with Tangy Cilantro Dressing ~ Kalyn’s Kitchen
Crunchy Asian Cabbage Slaw with Peanut Dressing ~ Little Ferraro Kitchen
Puerto Rican Spicy Cabbage Salad ~ 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

Low-Carb Spicy Mexican Slaw with Lime and Cilantro

Yield: 4 servings

Total Time: 20 minutes

Prep Time: 20 minutes

This Low-Carb Spicy Mexican Slaw is a salad that I make all the time, and I think this is a perfect side dish.

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. See notes.)
• 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 or Vege-Sal 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.

Notes:

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.

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 Low-Carb Spicy Mexican Slaw with Lime and Cilantro is a perfect side dish for most any low-carb eating plans, including any phase of 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. South Beach would prefer low-fat mayo; other low-carb diets would prefer full-fat, so take your choice on that.

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.

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