Stop Chopping. Start Grating.
Shredded root vegetables star in these colorful, flavor-packed salads.
For better salads, skip the knife and grab your grater
Eaten raw, fibrous root vegetables too often taste pretty much how they sound: dull and tough. But transforming them into a sweet, tender salad turns out to be simpler than we thought.
It’s all in how you slice them—or rather, grate them. Grating ruptures plant cells, releasing sugars and volatile hydrocarbons, the sources of the vegetable’s sweetness and aroma. The more cells you rupture, the better the taste. And grating ruptures more cells than just about any other prep technique. The shreds also have porous surfaces, which help the dressing stick.
The result is a sweeter, more tender and more flavorful salad even before you dress it. Shredded carrot salad is a French classic, but we’ve found the technique also works well with beets and jicama.
Shaula Clark
Shaula Clark is a Boston-based writer and editor. Her six-year stint as managing editor of Milk Street’s magazine absolutely leveled up her cooking game—though her trusty canine sous chef, Roxie the Schipperke, remains unimpressed unless cheese is involved. In the kitchen, she likes to get weird, with experiments yielding both great success (absinthe sorbet) and dismal failure (liquid smoke-infused rice paper “bacon”). Thanks to a terrifyingly productive tomato garden, Milk Street’s salmorejo—a luscious Andalusian tomato soup—has become a particular favorite recipe. She is, for the record, also staunchly pro-ketchup. Disagreements over her stance on condiments may be sent to .
