Meathead’s Creamy Southern Coleslaw, Kept Cold Safely

Delicious creamy coleslaw made with red cabbage in a white bowl, perfect for healthy, vegetarian meals.

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This article follows Meathead Goldwyn’s Simple Creamy Southern Coleslaw recipe on AmazingRibs.com, a mayonnaise-based slaw he describes as not too sweet. Quantities and timings come from that page; the cutting notes come from his companion piece on slaw technique. Because this is a cold side dish, the FDA’s cold-holding limits are covered below.

Ingredients (8 servings)

Vegetables

  • 1 pound green cabbage (about half a medium head)
  • 1 large carrot, peeled
  • 1/2 small white onion

Dressing

  • 1 tablespoon distilled vinegar
  • 1/2 cup mayonnaise
  • 1/4 cup sour cream
  • 1 tablespoon white sugar
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon celery seeds (not celery salt)
  • 1/2 teaspoon Morton Coarse Kosher Salt

The recipe notes that kosher salt is half the concentration of table salt, so halve the amount if you use table salt. It also prefers plain distilled vinegar to cider vinegar.

Method

  1. Cut the cabbage, carrot and onion. The recipe lists three options: chopped, grated or hashed (see below).
  2. Whisk the dressing ingredients together in a large bowl.
  3. Add the vegetables, taste, adjust the seasoning, cover, and chill for at least 1 hour if time allows. The recipe’s stated total time is 1 hour 15 minutes, including 15 minutes of prep.

The Optional Salting Step

Cabbage and carrots release water, which can leave the dressing thin. The recipe offers a fix and says to use it especially if the slaw will sit longer than 30 minutes: salt the cut vegetables at 2 tablespoons of Morton coarse kosher salt per pound of cabbage, let them drain in a colander for an hour or two, then rinse off the salt and pat dry. If you do this, leave the salt out of the dressing. The rinsed vegetables can wait in the fridge for a day before you dress them.

The companion article notes that Cook’s Illustrated recommends this salting approach, while Meathead himself would rather make the dressing a little strong and let the released juices dilute it. Both routes are published by the same source, so choose by how long the slaw will sit.

Chopped, Grated or Hashed

How you cut the cabbage decides how much water it gives up, since more cut surface means more liquid. According to the science article:

  • Chopped: hand-cut into 1/8-inch slices, then crosswise once or twice. Larger, crunchier pieces that release less water. This is Meathead’s preferred cut.
  • Grated: confetti-like and even, but it gives up a lot of moisture as it sits, so the dressing runs.
  • Hashed: minced fine with a food processor’s shredding blade, popular in the southeast for topping pulled pork sandwiches and hot dogs, and the runniest of the three.

He also suggests serving with a big spoon and digging to the bottom, because the dressing sinks. Red cabbage, red radishes and red onions can bleed pink into the slaw after several hours.

Keeping Slaw Cold at the Cookout

The FDA says cold perishable food should stay in the cooler at 40°F (about 4°C, our conversion) or below until serving. Once served, it should not sit out for more than 2 hours, or 1 hour if the outdoor temperature is above 90°F (about 32°C); after that, discard it. The FDA’s example is chicken salad, which it says can go in a shallow container set in a deep pan of ice, draining melted water and replacing the ice often. A mayonnaise-and-sour-cream slaw is the same kind of dish, so the same set-up applies. That last comparison is our reading, not an FDA statement about coleslaw.

A Vinegar-Based Alternative

Meathead’s sweet and sour coleslaw swaps the creamy dressing for vinegar, sugar and oil: 2 tablespoons brown sugar, 2 tablespoons white sugar, 1 teaspoon mustard powder, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, 1/2 teaspoon celery seeds, 2 tablespoons vegetable oil and 1/4 cup distilled white vinegar, over the same 1 pound of cabbage plus a carrot, a small onion and half a bell pepper. The recipe says to chill for at least 1 hour if possible, and adds that the vegetables give up water, so the mix may look dry and strong at first.

Dietary Notes

The creamy version is not vegan: mayonnaise, as defined in U.S. federal regulations, is made with egg yolk-containing ingredients, and the recipe also uses sour cream. It is therefore an egg-and-dairy dish. The sweet and sour version lists no egg or dairy, but it has not been checked for other animal-derived ingredients such as sugar processing, so it is not labeled vegan here.

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