Crunchy winter salad of kale, Napa cabbage, apples, and honey roasted peanuts all dressed in a fabulous Thai peanut butter dressing.
Some salads are all about the salad, and the dressing is just along for the ride. But sometimes, the salad is all about the dressing. This is one of those.
The unassuming sauce you see in the jar is a peanut butter dressing, and may look a little drab, but trust me - looks can be deceiving. This party girl bursts with flavors of soy sauce, lime juice, pomegranate molasses, and ginger, and comes together in minutes without much more than a sharp knife, bowl, and whisk.
I would love to take all the credit, or really any of it at all, but it's modeled on the recipe by a friend of mine who owns a wonderful winery in the Napa Valley way up on Diamond Mountain. Her recipe is on Food52 here. All I added were some little tweaks for my own preferences - a little more peanut butter and garlic, swapped out the warm water for peanut oil, nixed the peppers, and added lime - but Mare did all the heavy lifting.
If you make this, and you really must, make a big batch and throw it in the refrigerator for all kinds of things. Toss in a broccoli salad, use as a marinade for cauliflower (think cauliflower satay), or incorporate into a dip for raw veggies, French fries, or shrimp (for the meat and fish lovers). I could see this as a glaze for salmon too - with just a little brown sugar to get it all to caramelize a bit on the grill.
And, of course, use it to dress this crunchy salad of kale, napa cabbage, fresh mint, apples, and peanuts. Let me know how you like it!
Crunchy Kale and Apple Salad with Thai Peanut Dressing
Ingredients
Thai Peanut-Butter Dressing
- 4 tablespoon peanut butter
- 3 tablespoon seasoned rice wine vinegar
- 1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses
- 2 teaspoon freshly squeezed lime juice
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 2 teaspoon garlic paste or 1 large garlic clove minced
- 2 teaspoon ginger paste or peeled and minced fresh ginger root
- 2 tablespoon peanut oil
Crunchy Salad
- 1 bunch curly kale stems removed, cut into thin strips
- 2 cups thinly sliced Napa cabbage
- 1/ 4 cup fresh mint leaves
- 1 apple cored, quartered, and sliced thinly
- 1 cup honey roasted peanuts
Instructions
Thai Peanut-Butter Dressing
- Whisk together all of the ingredients for the dressing in a medium bowl.
Crunchy Salad
- Toss together all of the salad ingredients.
- Just before serving, toss the salad with ¼ cup of the dressing. Add more to taste by the tablespoon. Any dressing left over can be saved in the refrigerator.
Stephanie Weaver, MPH
I am definitely renovating this recipe! Love kale and cabbage salad. 🙂
The Wimpy Vegetarian
That makes me really happy, Stephanie! It's my new go-to salad - I'm having it every. single. night. 🙂
Liz Schmitt
Beautiful. On my way to my surgeon right now to get my cast removed from my hand - can't wait to start chopping again and your salad goes to the top of my list!
The Wimpy Vegetarian
I think you'll really like it, Liz! I'm so happy to hear your cast is off now!!!!
devangi Raval
I don't really like peanut butter, but ohh I love the peanut dressing you get at asian places. It's yum. I am definitely going to try your recipe.
The Wimpy Vegetarian
It's funny how when other ingredients are added, we can like a food we don't like on its own. I hope you do try it - it's become a huge favorite here in our home. Let me know if you have any questions!
laurasmess
I love peanut butter. Any nut butter, to be honest! I've never really combined it in a salad like this one (I've made thai inspired peanut sauce for dipping rice paper rolls etc but never for a salad) but the addition of the kale and apples sounds DIVINE. I will have to give this a go! Thanks lovely x
The Wimpy Vegetarian
Oh thanks so much Laura! If you like the peanut sauces for dipping rice paper rolls, I'm sure you'd like this one. And yes - this is now my favorite "go-to" salad 🙂
cheri
Hi Susan, love, love this dressing. I adore peanut butter anything, and then you added all the other wonderful flavors.
Wendy
I printed this recipe off as soon as it hit my RSS feed because it has so many of my favorite things in it (apples! peanut butter! kale! lime!) and stuck it on the fridge. It took me a while to determine the pomegranate molasses wasn't available locally but that it was easy enough to make. Once I finally made sure I had everything on hand, made the molasses, made up the dressing, took a taste, and realized I'd just found my new best friend. 😉 I had to sub in coconut aminos for the soy sauce because of food allergies, but it still turned out quite tasty.
The salad it's on is great and the dressing is, of course, phenomenal. I checked out the previous version at Food52 but I really liked the changes you made and I'll be sticking with them. Nom!
The Wimpy Vegetarian
Thanks so much for letting me know, Wendy! It's my new best friend too! It's so flexible. I'm thrilled that you made it and liked it so well. 🙂