The Crunchiest Ice Water Salad

For my dream salad, I’d skip the lettuce altogether and focus on vegetables with substance. And for a salad this hearty, the dressing would need to have real personality too. 

I rounded up an array of firm vegetables and cut them on a mandoline for maximum efficiency, quickly producing a pile of slices about the thickness of a dime. Beets contributed vibrant garnet tones and a bit of grounding earthiness; carrots, sunny pops of orange and a touch of sweetness. After combining these with hardy turnip and celery root slices and coating everything in a simple placeholder vinaigrette, I served myself a plateful. Even though the vegetables were shaved thin, eating this salad was too much of a workout for my jaw. I needed to include some lighter choices too. 

I held fast against lettuce, though. Instead, crisp and juicy fennel, celery, and radishes complemented the denser beets and carrots. After transforming 11/2 pounds of roots, stalks, and bulbs into svelte slices, I set out to take their crunch to the next level. 

Back when I worked in restaurant kitchens, I often prepped produce items hours before dinner service and held them in ice water, a practice that made them extraordinarily crisp and fresh-tasting by replacing water that was lost during slicing. The more water a vegetable contains in its cells, the crunchier it will be. (Compare the firmness of a juicy, farm-fresh carrot with the wizened flex of the one that’s been languishing in the back of the produce drawer.) It’s a trick that food writer Molly Baz also employed in her popular Ice Water Salad recipe. Inspired by her example, I loaded the slices into a salad spinner, submerged them in an icy bath, and refrigerated them overnight before spinning them dry. 

Pulling out my kitchen scale, I found that the vegetables had gained almost 3 ounces in water weight during their soak. I recognized this as a mixed blessing: The vegetables were indeed crisp, but I suspected that the salt in my dressing would start to draw out some of their moisture soon after it joined the salad, diluting the dressing. A thick, assertive mixture that could accommodate extra water would be key. 

My go-to strategy for bulking up a dressing is to add fatty ingredients such as nuts or cheese, but this time I wanted a nut-free, vegan solution. That’s how I ended up using one-third of a cup of deeply savory white miso and nutty tahini as a base. The fermented soybean and sesame pastes were so thick that I was able to whisk in an equal volume of bright apple cider vinegar without making the mixture too runny; neutral vegetable oil added richness. I thought this simple blend would be a winner, but when I spooned it atop the shaved vegetables, the rich umami notes were pleasant but fleeting, disappearing the instant I swallowed. It needed more oomph. 

For my next try, I ran the same combination of vegetables across the blade of my mandoline and loaded the salad spinner as before, but this time I sprinkled three julienned scallion greens onto the ice water before placing the whole thing in the fridge. Then I worked on some dressing improvements. 

I moved the operation to the blender so that I could incorporate solids: scallion whites, as well as a garlic clove. In addition to the miso, tahini, vinegar, and oil, I drizzled in honey for floral sweetness. I hoped that in addition to adding verve, these ingredients would give the dressing more cling so that it didn’t dissipate as quickly on the palate. Lastly, I sprinkled in touches of black and cayenne peppers for a subtle, spicy glow, and whizzed it all into a luscious blend that would settle to just the right consistency on the platter. 

When I pulled the spinner from the refrigerator, the scallions had been transformed into curlicues (another restaurant trick that never fails to delight). I transferred them to paper towels to drain while I spun the chilled vegetables dry. The soothing circular shapes with red, orange, cream, and pale green pigments were so attractive that I didn’t want to hide them under the opaque dressing. Instead, I transferred most of the vegetables to a platter, drizzled on some dressing, and arranged the remainder on top before garnishing the salad with the gracefully curved scallion greens. 

Step aside, lettuce: There’s a new—incredibly crunchy, impeccably dressed—salad in town.