8 Day Cabbage Slaw: Fresh & Flavorful

This 8-day cabbage slaw recipe is one I found in my Mother’s 30-year-old+ notebook of handwritten recipes. Recipes this old leave a few things to ponder. Not every measurement is given along with some other specifics. The recipes in this notebook are not scientific by any means))) Most of the time I can tell what she was talking about, but for a new cook, it might not be so easy.

The Ingredients

Cabbage

Green cabbage is a great vegetable especially when you are watching your weight. A cup of fresh cabbage only has about 22 calories and less than 3 carbs. Red cabbage has a little more, but not much.

So cabbage makes a great filler food whether you eat it fresh or cooked. My problem with eating fresh cabbage is that it’s usually in the form of slaw ….made with mayonnaise. Thereby defeating the purpose of watching those calories!

It had been a while since I had tasted my Mother’s 8-day cabbage slaw since she passed away over 20 years ago, but after browsing through her notebook of handwritten recipes I thought I would give it a try. No mayo, it sounded like just what I needed to get started in this new year of watching calories.

Watching calories and carbs is not new for me, I’ve been paying closer attention to it for the last five months and I’m proud to say I’m down FOURTEEN pounds))) Watching my diet, coupled with spending time at the Wellness Center is paying off))) I just have to keep it up.

Cabbage From the Garden

Cabbage was a staple in the garden growing up. I can remember being sent to the garden with a big knife to cut a head of cabbage.

Once the cabbage head was cut, you would peel off the outer leaves and discard them. Then the cabbage would be used for slaw or cooked with butter, salt, and pepper until tender. I never liked cooked cabbage, but my husband loves it. And let me warn you, if you cook it, it will smell up the house!

Sauerkraut

When the cabbage “started coming in” it couldn’t be left in the garden too long. We would harvest all the heads and Mother would slice it off real thin to make sauerkraut.

I never made sauerkraut and don’t remember a lot about how it was made, but it’s actually kind of scary when you think about it. The sliced cabbage was packed into a churn with salt. I don’t know if any water was added at the beginning, but water would form in the churn from the cabbage and salt. She would place a weight of some sort on top of the cabbage to keep it under the fluid level and then throw a towel over it and just leave it to sit there for a few weeks. She would occasionally check it, I guess to be sure it hadn’t gone bad or anything. I’m not sure how you could tell unless it smelled differently than you expected. After all, it was becoming sauerkraut and it has a smell of its own!

Whenever the sauerkraut was ready, she would then can it in pint jars and put it in the pantry. To prepare the canned kraut, she would just put it in the skillet with a little bit of bacon grease and cook it. All you had to do was get it hot since it had been canned. Our favorite way to eat it growing up was to cut up weiners in it. We still occasionally have it that way now. I like it on Reuben sandwiches and hot dogs now and then.

Back to the Slaw

Eight-day cabbage slaw I think gets its name from the fact that it would last eight days in the refrigerator. Now, don’t hold me to that, but, logically, it would last longer than slaw made with mayonnaise. Any kind of slaw would never last that long at our house anyway. We would likely eat it for a couple of meals and if any was leftover after that, we would be tired of it. Do you do that? We are not the greatest at eating leftovers anymore. I try to scale down my cooking most of the time so we don’t have leftovers!

Putting it Together

This cabbage slaw is easy to make, it just takes a little time to grate the cabbage. You can use a box grater, food chopper, or processor. You could use packaged cabbage but it’s much better with freshly grated cabbage.

The recipe called for 1/2 head of cabbage. Scientific measures go out the window. Cabbage heads are not all the same size))) So, it’s just a guestimate as to how much you need. If your slaw turns out to have too much liquid, add more cabbage. And if it seems a little try, add a little more of the oil.

Chop up the onion, bell pepper, and celery. I used a bit of red bell pepper in mine just to give it a little color. I used a red onion in my cabbage slaw too…..next time I’ll use a Vidalia. The red onion was a little bit strong I think. See the note below.

The recipe calls for Wesson oil. I didn’t have that so I used regular store-brand vegetable oil. And the vinegar…I’m not sure if Mother would have used white or brown vinegar. What I remember mostly having at home was just brown vinegar. I don’t think anyone was into the cleaning craze with white vinegar when I was growing up, or having apple cider vinegar in the house. We just had plain old brown vinegar.

I used apple cider vinegar in my cabbage slaw. I honestly don’t know if it makes any difference in what kind of vinegar you use. In a pinch, if you don’t have any vinegar, you can use lemon juice. But you can’t substitute lemon juice for vinegar if you’re doing anything like pickling or canning.

Onion

8 Days?

Well, I didn’t get a chance to see if the cabbage slaw would last eight days or not. It was gone in just a couple of days.

Next Time

What I’ll do differently the next time I make cabbage slaw will be to substitute Swerve Granular for the sugar to reduce the calories a bit, and instead of using a red onion, I’ll use a sweet onion like a Vidalia. I’ll chop the onion by hand too. I used a food processor to chop the onion, peppers, and celery and they were all a little bit juicy.

Do you have a favorite cabbage slaw recipe? Please share if you do!