Healthy Broccoli Salad – non-mayo-based vegan goodness! With purple cabbage, raisins, almonds, green onions, and almond butter dressing.
No mayo, no bacon, and no missing flavor because this baby is packed with crunchy-creamy plant goodness! Featuring purple cabbage, broccoli, raisins, almonds, green onions, and a creamy vegan almond-miso-orange dressing.
This salad (and many many variations of) has become a staple in our house. The dressing is wonderful – I think it is the little hint of onion/shallots that make it 🙂
Guys. It’s me and this broccoli salad here, and we are at your summertime service.
Crunchy, healthy, saucy, delicious things ahead.
Before we embrace the healthiness of this updated broccoli salad, let’s give a little love to the good old fashioned broccoli salad.
Yes, BROCCOLI SALAD. This is the food of my upbringing. I’m talking about the variety of broccoli salad that is thick with a sweet mayo-based dressing and loaded with plenty of bacon and sunflower seeds and raisins – the one that is so retro and amazing in the way that only a mayo-and-bacon-based salad can be. And in summer? I mean, basically any pot-luck, graduation party, or picnic-esque functions in my beloved small town Minnesota? You know there’s gonnabe broccoli salad out there in the wild, and you know we’re all gonnabe lovin it.
HOW TO MAKE OUR BROCCOLI SALAD:
My heart has nothing but love for the original broccoli salad. I’m not looking to replace it.
And to be honest, I’m not even expecting to win over the broccoli-salad-makers of small town Minnesota who kept my mayo salad quota full for most of my childhood. That’s okay. I won’t feel bad. There’s room for old and new at our table.
This can be its own thing, really, can’t it?
It’s a modern twist on the classic old school broccoli salad and it’s healthy and plant based and colorful and, I mean, I might be a tiny bit biased, but it’s also REALLY DELICIOUS to the point where you are willing to look past the embarrassment of pulling it out of the fridge for a midnight snack in order to taste the creamy, cold, salty-sweet crunch of the broccoli, raisins, and almond orange dressing.
It’s the kind of food that gets me most excited in all the world. ♡ Healthy meets color, texture, flavor, and ease of preparation. Diving in NOW.
The sauce starts with almond butter and miso to give it a heavy, creamy-like texture and weight that will cling to the broccoli and get all up in between those little crunchy ingredients. Then we work that sauce with shallots, canola oil, and orange juice.
So here goes. Throw the gang into the food processor and we’re off.
Super creamy, salty, delicious sauce that is mild and smooth in flavor – check.
Pour over super healthy ingredients like broccoli, almonds, cabbage, and raisins – check.
Toss together and find yourself at midnight eating the leftovers cold straight out of the fridge – CHECK.
Broccoli salad, I love you I love you I love you so much for summer.
Description
Healthy Broccoli Salad – non-mayo-based vegan goodness! With purple cabbage, raisins, almonds, green onions, and almond butter dressing.
Instructions
- Toss all the salad ingredients together in a bowl.
- Pulse the dressing ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Pour over the salad ingredients and toss to combine.
- Serve immediately! Add more orange juice to add more moisture as needed.
Notes
Miso Substitute: We’ve subbed in soy sauce for the miso and it works great!
We’ve made this several times and we liked it with a handful of cooked quinoa thrown in for good measure as well as a little bit of crumbled bacon as a throwback to the original broccoli salad. 🙂
If you like salads with a lot of dressing, be sure to double up on the dressing for this one.
Also, if you don’t have access to miso, you could just use almond butter in place of the miso but be sure to compensate with additional salt to taste.
