Keto Cucumber Slaw With Margarita Dressing

This keto cucumber slaw with margarita dressing is a delicious low carb salad that would be perfect for your next bbq or picnic. A delicious way to use some of those garden cucumbers! The low carb creamy dressing has the sweet and tart taste of a margarita. One serving has just 2.1g net carbs

You might also like this low carb creamy cilantro lime coleslaw.

My husband’s vegetable garden is starting to crank out some produce and that means it’s time for me to come up new vegetable recipes. He just presented me with his first batch of cucumbers and while I love cucumbers, I don’t eat that many.

So I grabbed some cucumbers and red cabbage and made this keto cucumber slaw and I tossed it in a creamy and sweet lime dressing that tastes a bit like a margarita! Its turned out so good and I love all the color of this healthy summer salad.

This keto slaw is cool, crunchy and colorful. It would be great for picnics or summer parties. Also the dressing is so tasty and has virtually no carbs. Best of all you only need 6 basic ingredients to make this easy recipe. You will love it!

The difference between slaw and coleslaw.

I found an interesting article on this topic on Chowhound. The term coleslaw is a dutch word (koolsla) in which kool means cabbage and sla means salad. That was back in the 1700s and mayonnaise came into the picture later on. So technically this is a coleslaw or cucumber cabbage slaw since I used red cabbage. However any salad made of chopped vegetables would be termed a slaw

Recipe ingredients I used and substitutions.

The simple ingredients I used in this cool cucumber slaw is red cabbage and cucumbers. For the margarita dressing I used mayonnaise, lime juice and zest, sweetener and salt. You can add a bit of ground black pepper too if you want but I wanted to use just the salt like you would on the rim of a margarita drink.

Red Cabbage
I love the look of red or purple cabbage. It’s just so colorful and I also like that it’s very sturdy and crunchy. Of course you can use regular green cabbage if you want or even a bag of coleslaw with the shredded carrots. However it’s worth the effort to buy the red cabbage if just for the looks. Especially if taking this to a party.

Cucumbers
I cut the cucumber into match stick sizes for the recipe. I used an English cucumber because it was seedless. They have these at Aldi all the time. If you have to use regular cucumber make take out some of the seeds if there are a lot. You don’t want to crunch down on a lot of loose seeds.

Limes
I used fresh lime juice and lime zest for the dressing. You could also use bottle lime juice which has no carbs but you definitely should use the zest for added lime flavor. You could probably substitute lemon juice and zest if you don’t have limes but the lime flavor gives it that margarita taste.

Mayonnaise
This is necessary for the creaminess of the dressing. You should use Hellman’s mayonnaise and not anything like Miracle Whip which has added sugar. In other words you don’t want a sweet tasting mayonnaise.

Sweetener
I usually use Swerve sweetener but you can use your favorite brand of sugar substitute. You don’t use much so use whatever you have on hand. And if you don’t care about carbs you can use regular white sugar.

If you want to add some herbs to this dish try some fresh cilantro or parsley. This dish has more of a southwest flavor so the cilantro would go better than fresh dill in my opinion. And for a bit of heat add some hot pepper flakes.

Also you can add some thinly sliced red onion or chopped green onions if you wanted to use this slaw for fish tacos. Here’s a great keto fish taco recipe.

How to make this keto cucumber slaw with margarita dressing.

This is a very simple low carb salad and should only take 5 or 10 minutes to make.

1. Get out a medium bowl and add the mayonnaise, lime juice, lime zest and salt. Whisk together the cucumber slaw dressing and set aside.
2. Slice the red cabbage very thinly. You can use a coarse grater or even an attachment on your food processor if you have one that slices thin. A mandoline would work great too. Place the cabbage into a large bowl.
3. Add the dressing to the cabbage and toss well. Refrigerate until ready to eat.
4. Cut the crisp cucumbers into matchsticks. You don’t want to grate them as they might make the dish too watery. Set them aside until ready to serve the salad.
5. When ready to serve the slaw, add the cucumbers to the already dressed cabbage and mix well.

NOTE: You can make this delicious cucumber slaw ahead of time but don’t add the  cucumber until you are about to serve it. The cucumbers have a lot of water content in them and might make it watery. So you could make this the day before but just add the cucumbers right before serving.

More keto cucumber recipes to try.

Every year we are inundated with a lot of garden cucumbers so here a few other great cool cucumber recipes to try.

• keto creamy cucumber salad with bacon, tomato and ranch
• lemon ginger Asian cucumber noodle salad
• low carb chopped vegetable salad
• cold cucumber and avocado soup
• eat slices of cucumbers with one of the keto spreads – whipped cottage cheese veggie dip, keto creamy herb cheese spread or pecan bacon goat cheese ball

Well I hope you enjoy this crunchy slaw recipe and some of these garden cucumber recipes. I’m sure I will have more this summer as they just started rolling in from the garden. And if you have any you want to share with me, please let me know in the comments!

The nutritional information for 1 serving is: 207 calories / 21.6g fat / 4.5g carbs / 2.4g fiber / 0.5g protein = 2.1g net carbs

1 tablespoon of the dressing has 0g net carbs!