Our authentic French carrot salad family recipe prepared from scratch, quick and easily.
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What is a French carrot salad?
A French carrot salad is a shredded or grated carrot slaw. The salad uses fresh carrots, which are topped with a simple, healthier and light dressing.
We make it all year round and call it salade de carottes rapées. It's a super classic and common salad side dish served in homes in France.
It couldn't be more french than that!
Ingredient Notes
- Carrot — You can us other carrot varieties, such as rainbow-colored carrots. The yellow, red, purple and orange colors look wonderful and make for a beautiful fall side dish presentation.
- Vinegar — We prefer white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar at home. You can use a flavored vinegar too. Raspberry flavored vinegar has been a thing with my family in France.
- Dijon Mustard — Preferably original smooth yellow dijon mustard and not the grainy dijon mustard.
- Salt & Black Pepper
- Oil — A neutral flavored oil is better so to not overpower the other ingredients, such as sunflower oil, canola oil, or another vegetable oil.
- Chives — To top the salad, for flavor and aesthetics.
Traditional French carrot recipes in France don't add any other ingredients to the slaw.
However, you can get creative by adding, raisins, chickpeas and some freshly chopped licorice tarragon.
My mother likes to shred some kohlrabi with the carrots, and she serves it together mixed up. So this is another idea.
How to make this carrot salad?
The salad is shredded or grated, and to achieve that I recommend that you use a food processor. It can be done manually with a grater, but it can be tedious.
Step 1
Rinse and scrub carrots to clean from mud and dirt.
Shred carrots in a food processor or manually with a grater.
Step 2
Place shredded carrots into a bowl.
Combine the dressing ingredients.
Step 3
Pour vinaigrette over carrots.
Top with some fresh chopped chives and serve up
📖 Recipe
French Carrot Salad Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 pound Carrot fresh
- ⅓ cup Vinegar
- 1 Tablespoon Dijon Mustard
- ½ Teaspoon Salt
- ⅛ Teaspoon Black Pepper Ground to taste
- ½ cup Oil
- chives chopped, fresh to garnish
Instructions
- Prepare your carrots. If they are garden fresh organic, cut off the greens and ends. Wash and scrub to get rid of mud. If you use store bought, peel if you don't know where they came from (because of pesticides).1 pound Carrot
- Place carrots into a food processor to shred or use a grater to do that manually.
- Prepare the dressing by combining vinegar, mustard, salt and black pepper in a small bottle or salad shaker. Then add oil at the end and shake again.⅓ cup Vinegar, 1 Tablespoon Dijon Mustard, ½ Teaspoon Salt, ⅛ Teaspoon Black Pepper Ground, ½ cup Oil
- Place shredded carrots into a mixing bowl.
- Sprinkle dressing over your shredded carrot. Use as much as you like.
- Sprinkle cut chives over the carrot and dressing and serve up room temperature or cooled.chives
Notes
Equipment
- Food Processor or Manual Shredder
Nutrition
Serving
This salad can be served with most main course dishes.
We had it with meats, casserole dishes, fish, seafood, dumplings, lentils, vegetables, pan-fried meals and much more.
It's as versatile as a simple green salad because it uses a vinegar oil vinaigrette as a dressing.
I, personally, love it with a shepherd's pie and a béchamel lasagna.
Storing
You can store salad leftovers in an airtight container.
I prefer to store shredded carrots and dressing separately, so I tend to add the dressing over the salad at the end only. That way, the carrots tend to remain nice and crunchy and not soggy.
You can prepare this salad days in advance (as I just explained with the carrot and dressing separated).
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