I made coleslaw for the first time, and it was pretty easy with the Vitamix. Most things I make in the Vitamix I process until they are maximally smooth, so it’s a bit of a change of pace to make something intentionally chunky. I was concerned about over processing, but it turned out to be a non-issue. I’m not a big fan of mayonnaise, so I made a vinaigrette dressing.
I loosely followed a
recipe from Mark Bittman. The Vitamix allows you to first shred the vegetables and then easily make an emulsion of oil/vinegar/other flavors. I used:
2 carrots
2 red jalapeños (deseeded)
1 small sweet onion
½ large head cabbage
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
4 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 large clove garlic
salt & pepper
To shred the vegetables, process them separately (although I combined the carrots and jalapeños because the jalapeños were so small). I used variable speed 5 for the carrots and onion with the dry-chop method. You put the lid on the empty container, start the machine, and then drop chunks of the vegetables in. I cut the carrots into thirds and the onion into quarters. Once they’re chopped dump them into a bowl.
I wet-chopped the cabbage, which means that I put chunks of cabbage into the container, covered them with water (after quartering and coring the cabbage), and locked the lid on. I pulsed them on high 4 times (left switch on high, on-off switch rapidly turned on and off). The one thing to watch out for is the chunks I used at first were a bit too large to process/circulate evenly. I salvaged them by straining them and re-processing the bigger chunks. I looked back at the Vitamix manual and found that they recommend cutting cabbage into 1.5-inch chunks. They also recommend just running the wet chop at variable speed 5 for 5-10 seconds instead of the pulsing on high that I used, so I’ll try that next time. Once they’re processed you can drain them in a colander.
I had a little extra time, so I soaked the shredded onions and cabbage in salt water for about 30 minutes, which takes the edge off the raw onions and reportedly makes the onion and cabbage more crisp. (I’m curious to try some side-by-side tests, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.) After 30 minutes I rinsed them in a colander.
While those were soaking I blended up the dressing. One thing to watch out for here is that we’re blending the bare minimum volume that the Vitamix can handle–4 oz–, which means that it’s a good idea to chop up the garlic a bit before putting it in. Normally I would just toss the whole clove in, but when I did that in this case it had a little trouble with getting stuck under the blades since there was so little liquid circulating. Bittman recommends gradually adding the oil while mixing the other ingredients; I’m not sure if it’s really necessary with the Vitamix, but I did it anyway to be on the safe side. So I added all dressing ingredients except for oil, started on low, gradually added the oil, then briefly ramped up to high.
Toss everything together in a bowl and enjoy! I was pleased with how this came out.