March 31, 2026

Marinated Slaw

Saw a napa cabbage at the supermarket this morning so I decided to use it make some Marinated Slaw. I started by halving the ~4lb cabbage, cutting out the core, and thinly slicing it. In the episode, AB used a box grater contraption for this, but a sharp knife and thin slices seemed to do the trick. After thinly slicing a large green and red bell pepper, I put everything in a colander to drain.

draining

There’s a difference between the episode and the online recipe here – in the episode, he specifically calls out not salting the veggies, and in the online recipe it says to salt them. After sitting for two hours unsalted, I got zero liquid in the bowl, so I tried a pinch of salt and left it for another couple hours. After that I only had like a teaspoon of liquid in the bowl.

Meanwhile, I made the brine. Another difference from the episode recipe, the online recipe does not add salt to the brine, whereas in the episode AB adds 2Tb of salt. So, for mine I split the difference and added 1Tb of salt. I then packed all of the cabbage and bell pepper into a jar and filled it with the brine.

in the jar

I was able to get all of the veggies and all of the brine into the jar. Then I popped it into the fridge for three days.

Fast forward to Saturday April 4. We were going up to Gemma’s sisters so I figured I’d bring this up for folks to try. The recipe and the episode were kind of unclear about how to actually eat this, so I just kind of winged it. I started by draining it in a colander.

drained

Then I used tongs to put a bit in bowls.

in a bowl

Overall, the slaw was crunchy and flavorful. The flavor was very much in the “bread and butter” pickles arena, which many people did not like. Not that it was bad, I just think that’s a flavor profile that folks in my family aren’t terribly fond of. For that reason, plus because it’s got SO much salt and sugar in it, I probably won’t make this again. But, I can totally see using this to top BBQ sliders or something of that nature.

Marinated Slaw

  • Crowd: 3/5
  • Ease: 3/5
  • Used half of a 4lb napa cabbage, one large green pepper and one large red pepper
  • Did not salt the veggies, but added 1Tb salt to the brine