Sweet-Potato Black-Bean Slaw with Pineapple and Pumpkin-Seed Dressing
Hand-cut cabbage that stays loud, pineapple, and cumin-roasted sweet potatoes folded in cold at the last second. The dressing is pumpkin seeds blended until they turn creamy.
The parts that change whether this works tonight.
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- Servings
- 6
- Timing
- 45 minutes
- Equipment
- Not separately declared
- Make-ahead
- Not separately declared
- Holding
- Not separately declared
- Leftovers
- Not separately declared
- Dietary notes
- Not separately declared
- Method map
- 16 ingredient lines · 4 method steps
Pairing
Wine — An off-dry Riesling, or a Torrontés. Sweet potato and pineapple stack sugar on sugar, and the wine has to bring acid and aromatics without contributing any more of it. Mixed drink — A michelada, or a Mexican lager with lime. The slaw is sweet, earthy, and lightly spiced, and beer with salt and acid is the least fussy correction available. Teetotaler — Pineapple juice cut half and half with soda water and a lot of lime. It repeats the fruit at half strength, which is the only way pineapple works beside sweet potato.
Tools
A blender that can actually break down seeds, a sheet pan, and a large knife for the cabbage. A food processor shredding disc works but cuts thinner than you want here.
Ingredients · swaps in parentheses
Sweet potatoes, olive oil, cumin, kosher salt, black beans, green cabbage (savoy, red), pineapple (mango), cilantro (mint), scallions, pumpkin seeds, lime, honey (agave), garlic
Magic
Keep the pineapple core. It is too fibrous to dice, so it goes in the bin, and it happens to be the sharpest and most aromatic part of the fruit — all the perfume, none of the easy sugar. Cut a two-inch length into chunks and blend it into the pumpkin-seed dressing in place of half the water. A blender that can break down toasted seeds will not notice the fiber, and the dressing picks up a green, almost peppery tropical edge that the diced fruit in the bowl cannot supply. Sweet potato, honey, and ripe pineapple stack three sweetnesses in that bowl; this gives them something to push back against that is not just more lime. Not feeling brave? Blend a one-inch piece and keep the water at the full amount.
Gotcha
Sweet potatoes folded in while still warm will smear into orange paste and steam the cabbage limp in about five minutes. Cool them completely on the pan, in a single layer, and fold them in with a spatula at the last possible moment.
Cabbage cut on a mandoline makes a slaw that goes limp within twenty minutes. Cabbage cut by hand into shreds about an eighth of an inch thick makes a slaw you can dress an hour ahead and still hear. The difference is entirely structural: thinner shreds have more surface area, salt and acid pull water out faster, and the cell walls collapse. Everything else in this bowl is arranged around cabbage that holds.
Serves: 6 Time: 45 minutes
Ingredients
- 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 15-ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained
- 4 cups shredded cabbage
- 1 1/2 cups diced pineapple
- 1/2 cup cilantro
- 2 scallions, sliced
- 1/2 cup toasted pumpkin seeds
- 1/3 cup water
- 3 tablespoons lime juice
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1 small garlic clove
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
Method
- Roast the sweet potatoes and forget them. Heat the oven to 425°F. Toss the cubes with 1 tablespoon olive oil, the cumin, and 1/2 teaspoon salt, spread them out with room around each piece, and roast 22 to 30 minutes until browned at the corners and tender in the middle. Leave them on the pan to cool completely.
- Blend the dressing until it turns pale. Combine the pumpkin seeds, water, lime juice, honey, garlic, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 2 tablespoons olive oil and run the blender longer than feels necessary, until the color shifts from dark green to a lighter sage and the texture is creamy but still pourable. Add water by the teaspoon if it seizes. For the magic version, chunk a two-inch length of the pineapple core into the blender in place of half the water here.
- Toss the base. Combine the cabbage, black beans, pineapple, cilantro, and scallions in a large bowl and add enough dressing to coat everything without a pool forming at the bottom. Taste the pineapple first; very ripe fruit may mean you want less honey and another squeeze of lime.
- Fold in the sweet potatoes last. Use a spatula and a light hand, right before it goes to the table. Finish with the remaining pumpkin seeds so there is something crunchy on top that has not been sitting in dressing.
Why the pumpkin seeds have to be blended twice as long as you think
A seed-based dressing gets its creaminess from mechanically broken cell walls releasing fat and starch into the water. Stop the blender early and you get gritty green liquid with seed fragments suspended in it, which tastes fine and feels wrong. Run it until the sound changes and the color lightens. If your blender is struggling, soak the pumpkin seeds in hot water for fifteen minutes first and drain them.
Use toasted seeds for flavor but reserve a handful of raw ones for the blend if you want a smoother result, since toasting drives off moisture and makes them harder to break down. This is also the reason the dressing thickens noticeably as it sits in the refrigerator. Thin it with water and a little more lime, not more oil, or it goes heavy.
Cutting a cabbage without ending up with confetti
Quarter the head through the core, then cut the core out of each quarter at an angle. Lay each quarter on a flat cut side so it cannot roll and slice across the grain in even strips. Working through a stable, flat-sided piece is what keeps the shreds uniform, and uniform shreds are what keep a slaw from having both crunchy planks and wilted threads in the same forkful.
Savoy cabbage is more tender and more absorbent, which makes it good if you are serving immediately and bad if you are not. Red cabbage holds the longest and will tint the dressing pink within an hour, which is either a problem or a feature depending on the table.
Make-ahead, and the shape of the leftovers
The dressing keeps five days refrigerated and improves after one, once the garlic mellows. The sweet potatoes can roast a day ahead and live in the refrigerator, though they will need twenty minutes on the counter to lose their chill. Cabbage, pineapple, cilantro, and scallions can all be prepped and stored together undressed for a day.
Dressed, the slaw is at full crunch for about an hour and perfectly good for four. Overnight it becomes a different and still decent thing: softer, more thoroughly seasoned, and better piled into a tortilla with something charred than eaten off a plate with a fork. Do not add the sweet potatoes to anything you intend to keep, since they are the component that turns to mush and takes the texture down with it.
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