So I made a cabbage salad weighing my ingredients. Then I imagined what two of my favorite YouTubers,
Adam Ragusea and Josh Weissman, would say about this exercise. Adam’s channel is sort
of a support group for home cooks. The main message is “you are ok, just the way you
are.” Josh’s channel is a boot camp for home cooks. Josh wants you to stop being pathetic
in the kitchen and make something of yourself, damn it.
Ah, what can I say, I love them both. I have this fantasy where Adam and Josh have a food
fight. It would be a macaron duel so epic Lin-Manuel Miranda would have to write a musical
about it.
So about weighing your ingredients… To Adam, the scale symbolizes the ultimate oppression
inflicted on the home cooks by the totalitarian, perfectionist, high cuisine Nazis. It’s
none of their business how Adam cuts his carrots and how much salt he puts in his salad. To
Josh, a scale is a symbol of liberation from inconsistency and mediocrity.
Where does that leave me? Do I run a support group or a boot camp? After some reflection,
I think my channel is a supportive boot camp. If you want your food to taste better, I want
to help you get there as quickly and easily as possible. Not all of you have time to find
your way through many many mistakes. Some of you have limited time to spend in the kitchen
and you need results fast. For the longest time, I’ve adopted Chef John’s philosophy
when it comes to seasoning -- if it doesn’t taste good, whose fault is that? To some degree,
he is right. John and I can’t show up to your house and season your food for you. But
once in a while, I think we should give you an example of what we consider to be seasoned.
It’s very difficult to do that in a cooked dish because when food is cooked, it shrinks.
So how much salt you’ll need will depend on how much you shrink it. But in a salad,
it’s actually doable, so why not give an accurate recipe? You know, at least once in
a while.
In case you want to ask for volume measurements, the answer is “no”. Just No. Either don’t
measure at all, or measure in a meaningful way. What on earth is a cup of cabbage? It
depends on how much you pack it down. It’s also completely unnecessary to dirty a bunch
of measuring cups and spoons when you could just put the bowl on a scale and dump everything
in.
Let’s start with the cabbage. We’ll only need about half of it. Remove and discard
the outer leaves in case they are dirty. Don’t wash the cabbage to avoid water getting trapped
between leaves, but if you see anything suspicious, take a damp towel and wipe it up. Trim any
blemishes. Cut off a couple of big chunks and shred them on a mandoline or using a knife.
By the way, I just got myself a new mandoline. My benriner slicer was getting dull after
years of use and I bought myself this cheapy little OXO thingie recommended by Daniel Gritzer
from seriouseats. True, it’s not continuously adjustable like benriner, but 3 settings that
it offers are plenty for me. What I love about it is that it’s small, easy to store, and
easy to wash. At $15 it’s a third of the price of benriner, so what’s not to love.
The guard is as useless as the one Benriner gives you, so buy cut resistant gloves. Mandolines
are extremely dangerous. Please use them responsibly. The links for the mandoline and gloves are
below.
We’ll need 450 grams of cabbage. You can certainly do that with a food processor, but
I prefer my cabbage sliced thicker than my processor disk lets me. On this slicer, I
am on the thickest setting. When I get close to the end, I do it with a knife. Here is
what 450 grams look like.
My goal with a carrot is to give it roughly the same shape as the cabbage. The easiest
thing to do is to grate it using a food processor. But since I already have my mandoline out,
I’ll just slice it thinly and then cut it into ribbons. We need 100 grams of carrot.
Here is what that looks like. It’s one large carrot. Now onto the green stuff.
We’ll need 30 grams of chopped herbs. Good options here are dill, parsley, and cilantro.
Today I have a mix of dill and cilantro. Cilantro stems are pretty soft, but dill stems are
a bit harder, so I’ll pull them out. Mince it all up and add to your salad.
Let’s add 15 grams of chopped scallions. White parts, green parts, everything. That’s
about 3 small scallions.
And that’s it. Let’s dress it.
20g lime and lemon juice. Yes it has to be freshly squeezed. You are welcome to use more
lemon juice or more lime juice, as long as you have a total of 20 grams. 7 grams of salt.
Because we are measuring it by weight, the salt type doesn’t matter, but I am using
Diamond Crystal Kosher, 20 grams of extra virgin olive oil. I started mixing everything
and then remembered that I forgot the sugar. We need 5 grams of granulated sugar.
Now give it all a really good toss. Be thorough so that you don’t have one bite that’s
too salty and one bite that’s too bland. There are 2 textural options with this salad.
The first one is crispy crunchy. It’s my favorite. To get this texture, serve the salad
immediately after dressing. The second option is to give the salad a slightly more tender
texture. You can achieve it by letting the salad sit in the fridge for at least an hour.
You can keep it for as long as 24 hours, but it will get progressively softer and in my
opinion less tasty.
Just to clarify. When I make salads for myself, I don’t measure anything. After you make
this salad once by weight, you should probably give it a shot the intuitive way. The point
of weighing the first time is to learn what my salad tastes like. Once you know that,
you can taste and adjust for future salads.
Here are more thought provoking videos for you to check out and if you are ever in the
Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.