A fresh vegan Zoodle Salad with chopped carrots, cabbage and red pepper – tossed with an Asian inspired creamy Cilantro Cashew Dressing. Spice it up with Sriracha sauce or sprinkle it with my favorite Rodelle Sriracha Seasoning.
Before we all get inundated with zucchini, let’s create an list of quick, healthy recipes where ZUCCHINI is the star! You can almost always count on a big fat zucchini in your garden after it rains, so let’s not wait – let’s harvest those zucchini and make more than zucchini bread!
One of the great attributes of zucchini is that they are a blank slate for flavor! Below is a short list of my tried and true, healthy recipes for zucchini. As you can see below, zucchini spans a wide range of flavor profiles.
~Breakfast~
Zucchini Bread Oatmeal
~Lunch/Dinner~
Zucchini Hummus Lasagna (vegan and gluten free)
Zucchini Basil Naan Pizza
Zucchini Noodles with Creamy Sun Dried Tomato Sauce (vegan and gluten free)
Zucchini Noodles Topped with Portabella Mushrooms
Herby Zucchini Polenta Bake
Lemony Greek Pasta Salad with Zucchini
Shrimp, Zucchini and Sweet Corn Risotto
~Baked Goods~
Savory Summer Tomato, Zucchini Corn and Feta Muffins
Whole Wheat Zucchini Bread
Lemon Poppyseed Zucchini Bread
Lemon Zucchini Cake for One
This chopped salad is as easy as blending the dressing, chopping veggies and spiralizing your zucchini. I use the KitchenAid spiralizer attachment to create my zoodles. It’s a great attachment!
When making raw zoodles, I opt for the thicker setting on my spiralizer. It’s the thickness of udon noodles and the thicker setting helps keep the integrity of the zucchini – smaller noodles tend to get soft pretty quickly.
The Creamy Cilantro Cashew Dressing won’t overwhelm you with cilantro flavor. It’s there, but it’s balanced with the soy sauce, garlic and sesame oil to create a really bold flavor that is mellowed out when mixed with all the other vegetables.
To add extra heat to this dressing, blend in half of a jalapeño. That reminds me of another similar sauce except this one is nut-free. It combines honey, cilantro and jalapeño and is tossed with rotisserie chicken and soba noodles for an easy weeknight dinner. If you like Asian flavors, you should check that recipe out too.
You may end up with a little extra dressing – which I’ve used as a sandwich spread, to top beet salad, or coat roasted veggies as well. It’s delish.
A fresh vegan Zoodle Salad with chopped carrots, cabbage and red pepper - tossed with an Asian inspired creamy Cilantro Cashew Dressing. Spice it up with Sriracha sauce.
- 3 medium zucchini, spiralized (about 6" long zucchini)
- 1 large red bell pepper, diced extra small
- 3 medium carrots, chopped into small pieces
- 1 cup shaved purple cabbage
- 2 large garlic cloves minced
- 3 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 1/2 tablespoons rice vinegar
- 3 Tbs sesame oil
- 1/2 cup salted roasted cashews
- 3 Tbs water
- 1 cup loosely packed fresh cilantro chopped
- Garnish with chopped salted roasted cashews, sriracha sauce and cilantro
-
In a blender blend sauce ingredients until smooth. Sauce may be made 3 days ahead. Bring sauce to room temperature and stir before using as it will thicken when cold.
-
Chop all ingredients and place in a large mixing bowl. Add zoodles and sauce (you may not need all the sauce) - mix well.
-
Garnish with a handful of cashews and chopped cilantro. Optional: sriracha sauce
This salad can make a great make ahead plant based meal. If you do make it ahead, keep the zoodles, sauce and cashews to top separate from the other ingredients. Otherwise the cashews will absorb liquid and loose their crunch and the zoodles tend to release water which can be drained off if kept separate.
this recipe is looking so good that i am gonna try it