It’s about this time every year that I start craving fresh vegetables. Between all the holiday food, football food, and generally heavy, slow cooked winter dishes, I need something light and fresh! Unfortunately a lot of fresh produce is out of season in February, so it’s hard to get that fresh flavor I crave affordably. So, I turned to my “hardy vegetables” this week and made a colorful, super crunchy chopped salad with a sweet and savory tahini based dressing. This Sweet Crunch Winter Salad is half salad, half slaw, and 100% deeelish! 

If you like my Lemon Tahini Dressing from my Roasted Cauliflower Salad, you’ll probably like the Maple Tahini Dressing I made for this salad. It has the same base flavors, but I made it a little sweeter with the addition of a touch of maple syrup and I toned down the garlic by using garlic powder instead of fresh garlic cloves. If real maple syrup is out of your budget, you can substitute honey or agave syrup in its place, although maple has a wonderfully deep flavor that I love as a compliment to the tahini. I use maple syrup very sparingly and it lasts pretty much forever, so this is one of those ingredients where a high price tag can be justified.

I suggest mixing up the vegetables for this salad and keeping them undressed in your refrigerator all week, adding the dressing just before serving each day. All of these vegetables are super hardy and have a low water content, which makes them great for storage in the refrigerator. You can switch things up and add to this salad to make it more meal-worthy by adding something like fried tofu cubes, chopped grilled chicken, or maybe even some crumbled goat cheese. It’s pretty flexible! :)

Sweet Crunch Winter Salad

Step by Step Photos

Begin by preparing the Maple Tahini Dressing. In a bowl or jar combine 1/4 cup tahini, 1/4 cup water, 2 Tbsp lemon juice, 1 Tbsp maple syrup, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp garlic powder, and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Shake or whisk until the ingredients are incorporated, then set the dressing aside.

These are the vegetables I used for the salad. Because all of these vegetables have a fairly low water content, they hold up really well in the fridge (and have a great CRUNCH factor!). I only used half of that cabbage.

FINELY chop the cabbage and broccoli. That is key. They need to be chopped into very small pieces! You should have about 3 cups of each once chopped. Peel and shred the carrot, and slice two green onions. Add all of those to a large bowl along with 1/3 cup unsalted sunflower seeds and 1/3 cup dried cranberries. 

Stir all of those ingredients together. This mixture can be refrigerated and kept for about 4-5 days, which makes this a great meal prep salad!

And then when you’re ready to serve, just plate it up and drizzle a generous amount of dressing over top! You really want a good amount of dressing on this one. With super crunchy, low moisture vegetables like this you need a liberal amount of dressing to help keep things moist. Plus it’s really yummy. Enjoy!

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