Recipes to use coleslaw before it goes bad?

Hi! We don't buy lettuce in the grocery store, but we do buy big bags of coleslaw for winter greens. Lettuce is rubbish; 'slaw is real food IMO.

These are about 2 lb. bags. No seasonings or anything, just chopped cabbage.

Problem is, the two of us only get through 3/4 of the bag before it starts to go sideways. So it goes on the compost pile. Again and again. That's expensive compost.

Two questions:

- If I was to rinse the fresh bag with boiled water and white vinegar, would it hold its freshness longer?

- Are there dishes where we could chop up a handful of 'slaw really fine and use some up, preventing the toss-out?

Hubby and I are big cabbage/slaw eaters. Lettuce is difficult to grow in my area of Hawai’i without it drawing aphids to the veggie patch or getting too bitter to enjoy. So we substitute cabbage/slaw instead.

Cole slaw, of course.
Salad, sliced fine. Just add other ingredients like any other salad, along with one’s preferred salad dressing.
Stir fries.  I make all sorts of variations of stir fry.
Soups, all kinds.
Cabbage steamed or simmered with smoked, shredded pork —- a very popular dish here in Hawaii.
Steamed, then quick fried in butter with some seasonings, usually just pepper and salt
Boiled with corned beef, carrots, and potatoes. A twice a year treat.
A low country boil. We make sure to have this at least once a month when we get together for Saturday night with friends.
Spring rolls
Cabbage roll sandwiches . We wilt the whole leaves by steaming them. Then chill. Then use them to make roll up "sandwiches"
            instead of using bread.

I’m sure others will chime in with their favorite uses. Lots if way to use cabbage/skaw.

Maybe sauerkraut! You could ferment the shredded cabbage, with or without peppers and spices

Harmony Dybala wrote:Maybe sauerkraut! You could ferment the shredded cabbage, with or without peppers and spices

Great idea, and yet this is in a high-volume kitchen whipping up meals on the spot every night. We do soups and chilis and pasta sauces and stir fries.

Maybe we just need to look at the "salad in a bag" as another raw ingredient for the daily dish-in-progress.

I like the isea od making saurkraut.

It is nor something that is an overnight process.

Try it you might like it!

We love coleslaw so cabbage has been a regular buy. When we are not getting to it fast enough, I have found that the chopped cabbage can be quickly cooked in boiling water. I'll add a bit of curry powder or some 5 spice powder to water and that takes the sulphur edge off. It can then be frozen and we'll mix it with or use it to replace rice for Indian or Chinese style dishes. Or just use it for a quick veg on those days we're busy.

It goes into soups easily as well.

When we have extra prepared coleslaw, we use it to top burgers with BBQ sauce and Swiss cheese. With extra of that mix, I'd use it as soup base with celery and onions or ferment it as others have suggested.

i use cabbage for anything i'd do with lettuce (and i never buy lettuce: here it requires too much water and usually is sprayed, also zero nutrition).

if you're dealing with pre-shredded cabbage, i love Dian's idea of chopping it fine and using it to mix with/replace rice.
if it's pre-shredded i'm not sure about how well it would ferment for sauerkraut, you might need to do some testing.
you could also do some quick pickling as a sandwich/salad topper.
In Japan shredded cabbage is often used on the plate, under a piece of schnitzel or a hamburger steak, for example. I find myself doing that sometimes when I don't have much other veg on the table.
you could also just throw a handful into the things you're already making: pasta, stir fries, curry, soups-- shredded cabbage goes into most of those pretty well (and often kind of just "melts away").

I love bagged coleslaw, very convenient.
I will point out that Napa cabbage seems to keep indefinitely in the fridge.

For slaw that is getting funky,  I just cook it in butter, often with onions.
This goes great with a little soy sauce and a fried egg.
Lettuce can be cooked the same way, though it generally has little in the way of body.

I wonder if one could quick pickle shredded cabbage along with some onions?

Cabbage is so infused with lactobacillus that you could probably make sauerkraut on an ongoing basis, just by adding the leftover bits to a crock as you go.

Those bags are not very economical so why not buy a head of cabbage?

When adding mayonnaise or salad dressing I have found that coleslaw lasts a long time/

If not adding mayo or salad dressing then why not make sauerkraut?

For a long time I had been wanting to try my hand at making my own Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki and I finally tried it out a few weeks ago. The best part is that you can tweak things how you like or to use what you have on hand and it is pretty versatile. Making it for breakfast means you can add it in to your more of your meals and have an option to use cabbage in a different way. I also made it up in a huge batch and froze several meals worth that could be defrosted and reheated in a pan. I haven't yet tried to make the sauce, but I was really happy how it turned out without it.

Edit - I was thinking where I first heard about Okonomiyaki and it turns out the same YouTube channel just dropped a video on Hiroshima. He tries his hand at making his own starting around the 7 minute mark: