The Perpetual Feast

This is part two of my experiments with the home-made ranch dressing.  I thought that cole slaw would be handy to have around. It’s a good side dish, and I like to put it on sandwiches instead of lettuce.  Now that the weather has warmed up a bit (relative to 9 feet of snow), I took out the smoker and smoked pork tenderloins. The cole slaw was particularly tasty on smoked pork loin sandwiches.

What appears to define cole slaw dressings is cider vinegar and sugar to give it the familiar sweet and sour tang.  So I just added the vinegar and sugar to the ranch dressing.

Ranch Cole Slaw

½ cup buttermilk ranch dressing
2 Tablespoons cider vinegar
2-4 Tablespoons sugar (I like my slaw sweet – but you can sweeten to your preference)
I Tablespoon celery seed (optional)
1 pound shredded cole slaw mix (I used Tricolor with carrots, but any mix would do – or if you’re ambitious shred your own.)

Whisk the first 4 ingredients together in a large bowl. Add cole slaw mix and toss thoroughly.  This is even better the next day. Makes 8 servings, with less than a gram of fat/serving.

Variation: After a day or so, I got bored with plain cole slaw, and decided to dress it up to make it a more interesting side dish.  I added a 15 ounce can of pineapple tidbits (drained) and ½ cup of golden raisins to half of the slaw. I let it sit in the refrigerator for several hours so the raisins would plump.  This would be a nice salad to take to a potluck, since the flavors are a little surprising.  It still has less than a gram of fat/serving.