This Simple Carrot Salad is typically what is served with South African Indian dishes. Growing up I remember my mum either making a Tomato, Cucumber and Chilli Sambal or it was this Carrot Salad as our side dish or accompaniment to our curries.
Simple Carrot Salad
You can imagine I wasn’t a huge fan then but now I eat almost any vegetable. Not that there’s many vegetables that goes into this salad.
This salad is also a great accompaniment to the famous bunny chow we eat here in South Africa. Today I made my hubby a Prawn and Potato Curry bunny chow and he was so chuffed.
I even baked him a fresh loaf of homemade Bread, he’s so lucky to have a wife like me…haha!
Simple Salad with not much instructions
I know this salad is so simple and you will probably wonder if I am crazy even posting it. However, not everyone knows all our simple secrets.
If you’re making a bunny chow at some stage trust me you are going to need this salad recipe. My Carrot Salad is a little different in that I pickle my onions before adding it to the salad.
My cousin, who lives in Perth, gave me this little idea and I love it. I have such fond memories of my cousin whilst growing up. We all lived in a big communal home with my uncles, aunts and cousins.
She was a cook of note, since she was a little girl. I remember her asking us to go “steal” a tomato or an onion from our mum’s kitchen and she would get other ingredients and she would light a fire outside and use her miniature pots to cook us a dish.
I cannot even remember all the details of what she cooked but I remember it all tasted delicious. Our childhood was so different, I remember splashing in bubble bath in a huge abandoned bath outside our home.
Waiting for the ice-cream truck on a Saturday and my late uncle would buy us all ice-cream. Our once a week treat. Every weekend we walked to the corner cafe with my cousins to get snacks and drinks for our picnics in the backyard.
I remember visiting a grand aunt, that lived down the road, regularly and we ate freshly picked apples from her tree. Those were the best days of our lives, so carefree and happy. How I wish my kids could experience more of what I experienced as a child.
I hope you do try this easy Carrot Salad Recipe. If you do please drop me a comment, it is always appreciated.
Some Indian dishes that pairs perfectly with this salad:
Carrot Salad
Ingredients
- 3 large carrots
- 1 small onion thinly sliced
- 1 green chilli
- 1/3 cucumber
- coriander
- 3 tbsp white vinegar
- 1 tbsp sugar
- salt
Instructions
- Thinly slice the onion and chop the green chilli. Mix the vinegar and sugar in a glass bowl or jar and soak the onion and chilli for about 30 minutes or until ready to serve the salad
- Peel and grate the carrot. You can use a box grater or use a food processor
- Chop the cucumber into cubes or however you wish to cut it
- Drain the vinegar from the chilli and onion and toss all the ingredients together. Season with some salt
- Add some chopped coriander to the salad. Serve with your favorite Indian dish
Notes
- Although here in South Africa we do not add nuts to our Carrot Salad, you can add some peanuts to it if you wish
- My mum also added some chopped iceberg lettuce to her salad just before serving, if you wish you can add some lettuce to the salad
