How to Cut Cabbage

Here’s my quick guide for How to Cut Cabbage for dishes like Coleslaw and Sautéed Cabbage, plus to how to core, slice, or shred cabbage with a knife or mandolin. So much of how you experience food can be changed just by how you cut it, so here’s how to do it well!

While ingredients do matter, it’s incredible how much a dish can change simply from the texture. How you cut cabbage matters, especially for dishes like Coleslaw, because it changes how heavy the vegetable feels on the palate, and how much you have to chew through it.

In this post I will show you how I prep a fresh head of cabbage from the store, then how you can change up how you cut it depending on the dish, whether you’re making cabbage steaks, cabbage soup, or need some thinly sliced cabbage for slaw.

Consider Removing the Outer Leaves:

If the cabbage comes from the store with thick, dark, and fibrous outer leaves, and you’re making something like slaw where the vegetable will be eaten raw, you will likely want to remove those first. Those outer leaves are tougher than the inner leaves. I remove them and save for cooked applications, like sautéed cabbage or soups:

Simply pull them off right at the root, and save for later.

How to Cut Cabbage:

Locate the stem on the bottom, then cut the entire cabbage through the stem, which will hold all of the leaves together as you keep cutting:

Cut those halves in half to yield quarters. Then it’s very easy to cut the core out, like this:

From here, you can chop, shred, or slice as you desire.

How to Slice Cabbage:

For dishes where you want thin ribbons of cabbage, use a knife or mandolin to cut, laying the quarter on a flat side:

However, if you have a mandolin, I think it’s much better for slicing and shredding.

You will get more even, uniform long strands, and it can be a lot quicker than cutting with a knife:

You can see the difference here between the hand-cut shreds on the left, and the mandolin-cut shreds on the right. It’s huge! What a different chewing experience you’ll have between those two.

I probably could’ve taken my time a bit more and made the knife-cut pieces thinner, but the mandolin is so much easier and ensures uniformity.

Now the shredded cabbage is ready to be used in whatever recipe you’d like, such as a garnish for Slow Cooker Asian Pork Tacos, swapping for the escarole in White Bean and Escarole Soup, or for a Classic Coleslaw:

For more produce cutting guides, I have How to Dice Zucchini, How to Cut a Watermelon, and more in my Vegetable Sides section of the recipe index. Happy cooking!

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