Carrot Ginger Salad
A silky, blitzed carrot-and-ginger dressing poured over crisp iceberg, cucumber and tomato — the starter salad every Japanese steakhouse serves before the grill even heats up.
Ingredients & method
Method
Amounts inside the steps follow the servings dial, so you never have to hold the arithmetic in your head.
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Prep the vegetables
Roughly chop 200 g Carrots, 40 g Onion and 25 g Ginger for the dressing, and wash and set aside the 300 g Iceberg lettuce, 100 g Cucumber and 100 g Cherry tomatoes for the salad.
Rough chopping helps the blender break the fibrous carrot down fast, which is what gives this dressing its silky texture instead of a stringy one.
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Blend the dressing
Add the 200 g Carrots, 40 g Onion, 25 g Ginger, 3 tbsp Rice vinegar, 3 tbsp Vegetable oil, 1½ tbsp Soy sauce, 1 tbsp Sugar, 3 tbsp Water and Salt to taste to a blender and blitz until completely smooth, 60–90 seconds.
A hard, sustained blend emulsifies the oil into the vegetable puree, giving the dressing its glossy, pourable body instead of a watery, separated one.
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Adjust the consistency
Taste the dressing and thin with a splash more 3 tbsp Water if it's too thick to pour, adding more Salt to taste if needed.
Carrots vary in sweetness and water content batch to batch, so a final taste check is what keeps the sweet-tangy-salty balance consistent.
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Build the salad base
Pile the 300 g Iceberg lettuce onto a wide plate or bowl and scatter over the 100 g Cucumber and 100 g Cherry tomatoes.
Iceberg's crunch and neutral flavour is exactly what lets the sharp, sweet dressing stand out, which is why it's the classic base at Japanese steakhouses.
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Dress and garnish
Spoon the dressing generously over the salad and finish with the 30 g Carrot, julienned and a handful of Spring onion (scallion).
Dressing it just before serving keeps the lettuce crisp instead of letting it wilt and turn watery.
About
Carrot ginger salad, as it's known across the US, has almost nothing to do with Japan and everything to do with 1964 Manhattan. That year Hiroaki "Rocky" Aoki, a former Japanese Olympic wrestler, opened the first Benihana, built around teppanyaki: a chef cooking theatrically on a flat iron griddle at the table. Japanese food was still largely unfamiliar to American diners at the time, so Aoki's menu leaned on a handful of approachable, showy touches to ease people in — and the wedge of iceberg lettuce doused in a bright orange, gingery dressing became one of them.
The dressing itself is a hybrid: rice vinegar, soy sauce and ginger are unmistakably Japanese, but the technique of pureeing carrot and onion into a thick, pourable emulsion with oil is closer to a French vinaigrette than to anything traditionally served in Japan. It caught on hard. Other teppanyaki chains copied it, bottled versions began appearing on supermarket shelves by the 1980s, and it is now often the first thing people think of when asked what a "Japanese salad" tastes like — despite being, by most accounts, an American invention wearing Japanese ingredients.
It sits at an interesting distance from carottes râpées, the everyday grated-carrot salad of French bistros, which is simply raw carrot tossed in a lemon or mustard vinaigrette. The Benihana-style version borrows that same instinct — carrot plus a sharp, oil-based dressing — but blends everything into a sauce rather than leaving the carrot grated, and swaps the lemon and mustard for ginger, soy and rice vinegar.
Cook’s notes
The dressing keeps in the fridge for up to a week in a sealed jar — the flavour actually deepens overnight, so it's worth making a day ahead.
Chop the carrot, onion and ginger before they go into the blender; large chunks blend far more smoothly than whole pieces and give the dressing its signature silky texture instead of a stringy one.
If the dressing looks too thick to pour once blended, thin it a tablespoon of water at a time rather than all at once — it's easy to over-thin.
Health benefits
Carrots are one of the richest everyday sources of beta-carotene, which the body converts to vitamin A for eye and skin health, and they add a useful hit of fibre for very few calories.
Fresh ginger contains gingerol, the compound behind its warmth, which has traditionally been used to settle digestion and may help ease mild nausea.
Because the dressing is blended rather than made with mayonnaise or heavy oil, this salad is considerably lighter than most creamy restaurant dressings, and the iceberg-cucumber base keeps the whole plate low in calories and high in water content.
General information about the ingredients, not advice about you. Nothing here is a medical or dietary recommendation, and no dish treats or prevents any condition. If you are managing a health condition, pregnant, or on a prescribed diet, ask a doctor or a dietitian.
Cons & who should be cautious
Soy sauce makes this a moderate-sodium dish, so anyone managing blood pressure or on a low-sodium diet should use a reduced-sodium soy sauce and go easy on the added salt.
Regular soy sauce contains wheat, so this is not gluten-free as written — swap in a gluten-free tamari for anyone with coeliac disease or a gluten intolerance.
The dressing carries a spoonful of added sugar to balance the vinegar; those tracking sugar intake closely, including people managing diabetes, may want to use it sparingly or cut the sugar back.
Iceberg lettuce is refreshing but nutritionally light compared with darker salad greens, so this is best treated as a starter or side rather than a main source of vegetables.
Not a complete allergen declaration. Ingredient lists describe what we used and cannot account for cross-contamination or what your particular brand contains, so check the packaging of everything you cook with.
Nutrition facts (estimated)
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