When your body needs a boost, this rainbow salad with orange miso dressing is nutritious and loaded with digestive supporting ingredients. Best of all, it's delicious and so easy to pull together.
Love your salads? Try a healthy-ish coleslaw or make it a meal with a kimchi salad with noodles.
This recipe was originally post on September 2, 2018 and reposted with ingredient images and profiles, instructions and FAQ's on November 8, 2022.
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Ever wondered what a human shag on a rock might look like? I'll send you a photo. Boy, have the last couple of weeks knocked me around. I have pretty good energy levels, I run most days and generally don't need too much sleep to refuel.
Recently though, I have felt less like Wonder Woman and more like the limp lasso hanging from her belt.
Feeling flat when you don't have time to be flat is flat-out, a pain in the butt.
Why This Recipe Works
While this rainbow salad is perfect to clean the pipes, so to speak, the combination of crunchy cabbage, carrot, sprouts, radish and almonds balanced with creamy avocado and sweet apple is a vibrant and tasty way to get back on track.
I do love my flavours.
Add my slightly sweet, slightly salty orange and miso dressing and I think this bowl will be on our rotation for a good long while.
Why Detox?
Now to be honest, I don't generally detox. I am not one for cutting out foods - besides the obvious (hello! vegan food blog) - but I do think adding some cleansing foods to the weekly rotation is a good way for us less motivated types to jump on the detox wagon without picking up the reigns.
Like any room in the house, our bodies can always benefit from a spring clean.
This rainbow salad is full of wonderful raw ingredients known to support the digestive process and tasty enough to eat for days.
What is a Detox Salad?
I am slooooowwwwly working towards my Masters in Human Nutrition (class of 2025, baby!) and I am forever amazed at the healing properties of good food.
A detox salad, like this rainbow salad, uses foods rich in antioxidants, vitamins and minerals that also contain purifying qualities. In other words, foods that flush our bodies of harmful toxins and free radicals. We mix them all up in one delicious bowl.
Common detox foods include:
Filling your salad with nutritious ingredients that support your body's natural detoxification process is the cornerstone of a detox salad.
Shopping Tip. Natural pigments, broadly chlorophylls, anthocyanins, carotenoids, and betalains, determine the colour of fruits and vegetables.
Where possible, choose colour in your shopping. Purple or yellow cauliflower, purple Brussel Sprouts, yellow carrots, red onions all add variety through different plant pigments and each pigment provides a different health benefit.
Ingredients & Substitutions
While you can literally play with your food to create your own rainbow blend, the following ingredients from my salad are easily sourced and delicious.
Cabbage. Loaded with Vitamin C and sulphur, cabbage helps to remove free radicals and uric acid from the body. Cabbage is also high in fibre and antioxidants
Raw Carrot. Carrots contain Vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, C and an army of nutrients including folate, niacin and pantothenic acid.
Important to the detoxification process, Vitamin A helps flush toxins from the body and reduces fat from the liver
Orange. With vitamin C, fibre and antioxidants, oranges are naturally good for you.
Apple. Dietary fibres found in apples help to flush the body while antioxidants protect cells from free radicals
Brussels Sprouts. A cruciferous vegetable, sprouts support both Phase 1 (the breaking down of toxins) and Phase 2 (the removal of toxins) within the body. They are also a good source of antioxidants
Avocado. Eating good fats like those within the avocado is essential to detoxing as they stimulate bile production in the gallbladder
Radish. Besides being a member of the cruciferous family, radishes contain a special compound that acts as an antioxidant during Phase 2 detoxification
Mint. Mint is thought to improve the flow of bile through the stomach speeding up the digestion process (if you love mint check out my roast chickpea bowl with preserved lemon and mint recipe. So good!)
Almonds. Almonds are a good source of protein plus they are rich in magnesium, a mineral that is needed for detoxing.
Miso paste. Miso pastes adds depth to this detox salad and being a fermented food is great for gut health.
Garlic. Besides being delicious, garlic is a detox superhero.
How to Make a Rainbow Salad
Step 1.
Throw the red cabbage, Brussel sprouts, radish, carrot, apple and mint to a large mixing bowl.
Step 2.
In a small bowl whisk together the orange juice, miso and garlic before adding the sunflower oil in a steady stream, still whisking.
Step 3.
Add a quarter or so of the dressing to the salad mixture and toss through.
Step 4.
To serve, add the dressed mixture to a serving bowl and top with the chopped almonds and sliced avocado. Drizzle a little more dressing to salad - to taste - and season with sea salt.
Recipe Notes
While radishes are most nutritious raw, you can roast them to soften their heat.
You can swap out cabbage for kale, just make sure you massage it well to avoid chewiness.
Add cooked and cooled edamame beans for a protein boost.
FAQ
You can, but I will say, detox salads are best and most effective freshly made.
Of course, it's your salad. There is a list of alternative detox ingredients in the post.
More Salad Recipes.
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Make This Recipe
Rainbow Salad with Orange Miso Dressing
Ingredients
Detox Salad
- 3 cups red cabbage finely sliced
- 4 Brussel Sprouts finely sliced
- 3-4 radishes sliced julienne
- 1 carrot peeled and sliced julienne
- 1 fuji apple cored and sliced julienne
- ¼ fresh mint leaves finely sliced
- ½ avocado peeled, deseeded and thinly sliced
- ½ cup almonds roughly chopped
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
Orange Miso Dressing
- ⅓ cup freshly squeezed orange juice around 2 oranges
- 1 tablespoon white miso paste
- 1 garlic clove (small) minced
- 2 tablespoon sunflower oil
Instructions
- Add the red cabbage, Brussel sprouts, radish, carrot, apple and mint to a large mixing bowl.
- In a small bowl whisk together the orange juice, miso and garlic before adding the sunflower oil in a steady stream, still whisking.
- Add around a quarter of the dressing to the salad mixture and toss through.
- To serve, add the dressed mixture to a serving bowl and top with the chopped almonds and sliced avocado. Drizzle a little more dressing to salad - to taste - and season with sea salt.
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