Rainbow Salad – Asian Style and Vegan

This Rainbow Salad is my take on the Vietnamese style rice noodle salad. It has all the colours, textures and flavours of the Vietnamese salad, just no rice noodles.

Vegetables like carrot, cucumber, bell peppers, cabbage etc. are either peeled or spiralised into noodles or chopped up into really thin strands, to make it look and taste like a noodle salad. It is something you will have kids accepting with no tantrums.

Making noodles out of vegetables like carrot, cucumber or zucchini makes them infinitely more interesting not just for kids but also adults. Especially if you don’t have very strong teeth, chewing on big chunks of rock hard carrots is definitely not a pleasant eating experience. Grating or peeling/shaving into thin strips is a good way to deal with carrots in a salad.

Check out these other Carrot Salad recipes

1. Easy Shredded Carrot Salad
2. Skinny 5-Ingredient Carrot Salad
3. Chickpea, Carrot and Cranberry Salad
4. Summer Garden Salad

In this Asian-style Rainbow Salad, apart from veggies in different colours, I like using generous quantities of coriander and spring onion greens so that it doesn’t lack for flavour. Soya sauce, vinegar, maple syrup (use honey for vegetarian version) and chilli flakes form the salty, sour, sweet and spice pillars for the addictive salad dressing. By the way, you can easily use this salad dressing as a dipping sauce for any Asian style appetisers or as a marinade for tofu.

Sesame seeds and crushed roasted peanuts add the fun element of crunch that is mandatory to make a salad interesting.

Variations on this Rainbow Salad

1. Toss in cooked rice noodles (or regular noodles) along with this rainbow salad to make this into a meal
2. Whisk in some melted peanut butter to the salad dressing for a creamier dressing. Omit the peanuts.
3. Whisk in some Thai curry paste (red or green) and some coconut cream (the thicker part of the coconut milk) to the dressing to make a Thai curry style salad
4. Marinate strips of tofu in the same dressing and saute them before adding it to the salad

Rainbow Salad

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Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Total Time 15 minutes mins

Servings: 2

Course: Salad, Side Dish

Cuisine: global vegetarian

Ingredients Method

Ingredients

  

Vegetables etc.

• 1 large carrot
• 1 large cucumber
• 1 small yellow bell pepper
• 1 small red bell pepper
• 100 grams red cabbage small piece
• 1/4 cup finely chopped spring onion greens
• 1/4 cup finely chopped coriander leaves
• 1-2 green chillies

Dressing

• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tbsp white vinegar
• 1 tbsp maple syrup use honey for non-vegan version
• pinch red chilli flakes
• 1/4 tsp finely grated ginger
• 1 tsp toasted white sesame seeds

Garnish

• 1/4 cup roasted peanuts
• few microgreens optional

Method

 

1. Peel the carrot and cucumber.
2. Using a julienne peeler or spiraliser, process the carrot and cucumber into thin noodles.
3. Cut the bell peppers into as thin strips as possible, discarding the core and the seeds.
4. Chop the red cabbage into very thin slices and separate into thin strips.
5. Slice the green chillies lengthwise, scrape out the seeds and chop into thin strips.
6. In a bowl, mix together all the prepped vegetables with spring onion greens and coriander.
7. Mix all the dressing ingredients well with a fork. Pour over prepared ingredients in the bowl and toss well to coat.
8. Crush the peanuts coarsely using a mortar pestle. Sprinkle over the salads just before eating.

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