The BEST Creamy Coleslaw Recipe

0:00It's time for a recipe of the day. I've always preferred creamy coleslaw over the vinegary coleslaw, but I was never like a super huge fan until I tried this recipe, which is my mom's creamy coleslaw recipe. If you listen to the weekend episode, the surprise recipe of the day that I put it on Saturday's that I had my mom on for back around Christmas, she told us about that recipe. And now I've actually written it up and photographed it and put it on the website and made a video and done all the things. And now it's getting a podcast episode too. And it deserves it because it is such a good coleslaw recipe. Now the thing that makes it so good is a couple of secret ingredients that you can't really taste, but bring so much extra flavor and they just make so much sense you're going to know it as soon as you hear that they are dill pickle juice and horse radish. Okay, why? So most coleslaw recipes include some kind of vinegar, right?

1:00Well, what if that vinegary ingredient brings lots of extra garlicky dillie flavor with it? It's subtle, but it's there and it adds so much. And then I think of the horse radish as kind of like garlick and onion. You know how those aromatics have that little bit of heat to them? Horse radish has a similar heat, but maybe a little bit more potent, you know? So it's just a little bit of those two things mixed in there, but they make a huge difference and this stuff is just so good. I can't wait for you to try this one. Okay, what you're going to do is get out a big bowl and mix together a cup of mayonnaise with six tablespoons of that dill pickle juice. Now what if you don't have enough dill pickle juice? I know. I use it in a whole bunch of things now and I kind of run out. I wonder if anybody just markets just dill pickle juice. You know how they do like olive brine for making dirty martinis? I wonder if there's somebody out there who's just selling pickle juice. I swear they would make a fortune off of me. Okay, anyhow, if you don't have enough, just measure however much you have and then you

2:03make up the difference for that six tablespoons with equal parts cider vinegar and water and then a little bit of salt stirred in and you let the salt dissolve into there and it should taste salty, briny like pickle juice, right? Now if you have a different kind of pickle juice, some kind of like butter pickles or corny shell or I don't know what else you have. I don't know if you've heard me talk about this before but I don't like any other kinds of pickles so I don't have any of those ever but I did test it and if you have them, you can use them but they tend to be sweeter and I don't like them as much. You definitely are going to want to omit some of the sugar. So give it a little taste and decide if you think it might be too sweet then take away some sugar. If it's not salty enough, you might want to add some salt. Okay, so we've got a cup of mayonnaise and six tablespoons of dill pickle juice or some concoction that you've made up to make up for that. In a large bowl, you add three tablespoons of sugar to that and then two tablespoons of horse radish.

3:03Oh, I'm telling you the same thing that tell you all the time today for some reason. Here's another one. Dill pickle juice radish. If you don't already, make sure that you buy the one that sold in the refrigerated section of the grocery store near the refrigerated pickles and refrigerated sourcrow. Actually, I'm just going to say the dill pickles that I buy are the refrigerated dill pickles right next to that horse radish. So over there in the refrigerated section, that horse radish has such a potent strong flavor compared to the stuff sold shelf stable in the like dry goods aisle and I've actually done a taste test of this. I was telling my former neighbor's husband this at some point and he didn't really believe me or didn't know what I was talking about. And so I put a little bit of regular horse radish in one bowl and the refrigerated horse radish in another bowl. And then I had some of that like horse radish sauce, the one that's kind of mixed with mayonnaise or something and we put that in a third bowl and he tasted them all and that refrigerated one. It blew his head off. He couldn't believe it. So yeah, it's just much better. Get it if you can.

4:03So to that mixture of mayonnaise, dill pickle juice, sugar and horse radish, it was two tablespoons of horse radish. You're also adding one and a half teaspoons of regular yellow mustard, a quarter teaspoon of salt, an eighths of a teaspoon of black pepper, an eighths of a teaspoon of onion powder. Makes that all up and then add four cloves of finely minced garlic. I really do like the fresh garlic in here, although I'll tell you I also often add half a teaspoon of garlic powder as well. I do like those strong flavors. You know me. Okay. So I'm going to add in there, stir that a little up and then you're going in with the cabbage. So it's about half a head of cabbage that you've cord and finely sliced. That's going to be equivalent to about six to seven cups of sliced cabbage or you can use a 14 to 16 ounce bag of the store bought shredded cabbage. It's sometimes called coleslaw mix. That's going to be perfect. And then I do two carrots that I've peeled and then shredded on a box grater if I'm using the whole head of cabbage or half a head of cabbage that I sliced myself. I do that.

5:04If I'm buying that slomix, it often already has the carrots in there. Sometimes there's red cabbage in that mix too. Sometimes if I have both red and green cabbage, I will do a half of each one and kind of double the recipe or a quarter of each one and make the same amount of recipe. The color is really nice in there. Okay. So you stir that all up and then you really want to let it sit for at least 30 minutes, cover the bowl, put it in the fridge. What kind of softens the cabbage just that little bit unless those flavors, mingle and penetrate? I will say whether you've left it for 30 minutes or you've left it in the fridge overnight or even for a couple days, it's good for a couple of days, right? It just gets softer. One of the things that can happen is that liquid starts to come out of the cabbage and it can water down your coleslaw. Now we've talked about this before when we were talking about potato salad and pasta salad that one of the things you can do is add more dressing or in this case, add more mayonnaise. That's definitely going to work. But what I like to do is to first drain off that liquid because it's just water, kind

6:06of like salty water really. So what you would do is maybe get out another bowl and then use tongs to transfer your coleslaw from the bowl. It's into the new bowl. Kind of shaky as you go. You're leaving behind that liquid and then you can stir in a couple more tablespoons of mayonnaise, two to four tablespoons, two tablespoons at a time, right? And it's going to get creamy again and coated again and then give it a taste. You might want to add more salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, that kind of thing because some of those things might have washed away in that watery liquid. You know what I mean? So that is my best tip for less watery coleslaw if you are making it ahead and you heard my best tip for the most flavorful coleslaw is to do what my mom does and add dill pickle juice and horse radish to your dressing. So crazy good. I cannot wait for you to try this. I will put the link to this recipe in the show notes for this podcast episode or you can add to cook the story.com slash our O T D and get it there or find it in our Facebook group. Facebook.com slash groups slash recipe O T D and hey, just a quick note.

7:10I'm on a recording hiatus right now. So for the next little while, I'm replaying episodes from the archives, including this one. If you heard me mention a holiday a season or something going on in my life that seemed a bit off, that's why thanks so much for listening. And I hope you're enjoying these older episodes. I am Christine Pittman from cookthestorey.com thecookful.com cook for two goddess and from this podcast recipe of the day, I hope you have a great day. Let's get cooking.