Make this Asian zucchini noodle salad recipe, and you can enjoy a healthy, nutritious dish that boasts incredible flavour in every mouthful. You need to dice and spiralize some vegetables and combine tangy Asian dressing ingredients to make the best Asian zucchini noodle salad you ever had.
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Asian zoodles salad is a wonderful blend of zoodle, or spiralized zucchini noodles along with other vegetables and an Asian inspired dressing. Have it for lunch or pair it with your preferred protein as a side dish.
Why You’ll Love This
Colourful: We eat with our eyes before taking a single bite, and the bright colours in this salad make you instantly want a grab a fork (or pair of chopsticks!) and dig right in.
Nutritious: Each of the vegetables in this recipes comes with its own vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, and the dressing isn’t high fat and doesn’t have any sugar. This is also a low-carb dish.
Different: Salad recipes you find yourself making all the time can get old. What was once your favorite salad can easily become boring, so liven things up with this Chinese style zoodles salad. It makes a great change.
Asian Zucchini Noodles Ingredients
The recipe calls for yellow squash, zucchini, carrots, red onion, green onions, and cabbage. For the dressing, you need mirin, coconut oil and sesame oil, soy sauce, lime juice, garlic paste, and fresh ginger pastes.
How to Make It
For more detailed instructions with weights and measurements, jump to the printable recipe card.
Make the dressing: Shake all the ingredients for the dressing together in a mason jar or similar.
Spiralize the vegetables: Run the raw zucchini, squash, and carrots through a spiralizer, then toss with salt.
Add the other ingredients: Drain off any excess liquid the salts pulled out and toss the squash, carrot, and zucchini noodles with the green onions, red onion, and dressing.
Substitutions and Variations
You can use other kinds of vegetables in this if you want, such as red bell pepper or green bell pepper, thinly sliced mushrooms, snap peas, red cabbage, or even some crushed pineapple chunks if you drain them well first.
You can also use Thai peanut dressing in place of the dressing or add other components such as seasoned rice vinegar (in place of the mirin) or apple cider vinegar, red pepper flakes, extra sesame oil, toasted sesame seeds, or chili garlic sauce.
Sub coconut aminos for the soy sauce if you want. If you want a sweet touch, honey, agave syrup, sugar, or artificial sweetener would work in the dressing.
What to Serve with Asian Zucchini Noodle Salad
You can have this by itself or pair it with protein such as grilled shrimp, black pepper chicken or rotisserie chicken, or even a juicy steak. Other side salads you may want to try are a hot girl summer salad, green goddess salad or Italian tuna white bean salad.
Zucchini noodles go with pretty much anything, and, if you swap the Chinese-inspired dressing for any other dressing, you’ll find it does go with anything!
How to Store Zucchini Noodle Salad
Store: Keep the zucchini noodles mixture separate from the dressing and refrigerate both for a day before mixing.
Freeze: This salad doesn’t freeze well because it gets mushy when thawed, so serve immediately for the best result.
Asian Zucchini Noodles Salad FAQs
You can get various types of spiralizers. If you like to spiralize veggies often, something like this one will make zucchini noodles prepping quick and easy. A budget option like this Veggetti spiralizer works rather like a pencil sharpener.
If you’re unfamiliar with this ingredient, you might want to know more about what it is exactly and why it has a place in your zucchini noodles salad.
Mirin is popular in Chinese recipes and is a type of rice wine. It contrasts nicely with the sesame oil, lime juice, and other dressing ingredients. It’s alcoholic, so sub a different vinegar and omit the mirin if you prefer.
Asian Zoodle Salad Recipe
Asian Zoodle Salad
Ingredients
- 2 yellow squash
- 2 zucchini
- 2 carrots
- 1 red onion thinly sliced
- ½ Cup red cabbage thinly sliced
- ¼ Cup green onion diced
- 1 Tablespoon sea salt
Dressing
- ¼ Cup mirin
- ¼ Cup coconut oil
- 1 Tablespoon sesame oil
- 2 Tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 Tablespoon lime juice
- 1 Teaspoon garlic paste
- 2 Teaspoon ginger paste
Instructions
- First, prepare the dressing. Combine all ingredients in a mason jar and shake. Refrigerate until ready to use.
- Next, spiralize the zucchini, squash, and carrots. Add to a colander and toss with sea salt. Let sit for 15 minutes to drain excess liquid.
- Rinse and pat dry. Add to a large bowl and combine with red onion, cabbage, and green onion.
- Drizzle with dressing and toss to coat.
Nutrition
The nutrition information provided are only estimates based on an online nutritional calculator. I am not a certified nutritionist. Please consult a professional nutritionist or doctor for accurate information and any dietary restrictions and concerns you may have.
Asian zucchini noodle salad makes a healthy and tasty meal or side dish. It’s quick and easy to make, and if you have a good spiralizer, you can prepare this in just 15 minutes. It will become one of your favourite salad recipes!
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Bella Bucchiotti
Bella Bucchiotti is a storyteller, food lover, dog mom and adventure seeker living on the Pacific coast. She shares her passion for food, dogs, fitness, adventures, travel and philanthropy, in hopes of encouraging followers to run the extra mile, try new recipes, visit unfamiliar places and stand for a cause. Bella lives with Type 1 Diabetes and Celiac Disease.
