Shredded Carrot Salad with Coriander and Dill

This shredded carrot salad is an easy and light, 5-minute side dish. Featuring coriander seeds, dill, garlic, and vegan yogurt dressing.

How Fran Lebowitz feels about tourists in New York is how I feel about the “sad side salad” (and the worst offender of them all: mesclun greens[!]). It’s a mix of frustration and confusion, but also a glimmer of hope that a better New York/side salad is possible.

This shredded carrot salad is a breath of fresh air for the side salad category of foods. I honestly feel it’s something we can all get excited about eating and you gotta love how it puts a typically behind-the-scenes vegetable front and center. The best part is it takes 5 to 7 minutes to make.

The concept is inspired by a salad my mom would make from time to time when I was a child: a simple mixture of grated carrots, mayo, and crushed garlic. (Fact: almost every Russian/Ukrainian salad is dressed with mayo.)

I actually wish she’d made it more often, but I imagine she was put off by having to grate carrots by hand, on a box grater, since food processors did not exist in Ukraine.

This shredded carrot salad is translated to fit my cooking style. I dialed back the amount of mayo and subbed in vegan Greek yogurt. I also added coriander seeds, as well as some dill, to balance out the carrots’ sweetness.

Carrots are a winter root vegetable, while coriander has a warming, woodsy quality. Hence, the two are a great match. Toasting whole spices intensifies their aroma tenfold, so I encourage you to toast these seeds. Just place them in a dry skillet over medium heat for a few minutes, until they smell toasty and perfume-y.

About Vegan Yogurt

Currently, the realm of vegan yogurt products leaves much to be desired. Most unsweetened, unflavored versions I’ve tried range from okay to inedible. The texture is starchy/goopy, or they taste heavily of nuts, or they lack that signature tang that yogurt is all about. This is doubly true if you’re seeking a thick Greek-style yogurt.

There are two brands that are definitely worth their salt: Anita’s and Cocojune – both made from coconut. They’re small-batch, made with fair trade coconuts, and contain live probiotics. They’re thick, tangy, and deliciously creamy – as close to traditional Greek yogurt as a plant-based alternative can get. (Another benefit of Cocojune is its plastic-free packaging.)

The downside is the price: a 16-ounce tub of either of these will run you $9-13. That’s a lot of dollars – compared to dairy yogurt, anyway.

Another downside is limited distribution (I had to make a special trip to Whole Foods to pick up Cocojune.) Anita’s does ship nationwide, while Cocojune is available at some Whole Foods and Sprouts.

(Have you found any good vegan yogurts? Please share in the comments!)

If you can’t find either of these brands, and if you don’t mind a little dairy, you could use regular Greek yogurt here instead.

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