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 the best way to prep a fresh head of cabbage from the store, plus 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.

This technique applies to the standard red or green raw cabbage from the grocery store, but also to napa cabbage, savoy cabbage, and Chinese cabbage.

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. First thing, I remove them and save for cooked applications, like sautéed cabbage, soups, and cabbage rolls:

Simply pull them from the whole cabbage right at the root, and save for later.

How to Cut Cabbage:

Locate the stem on the bottom, then cut the entire cabbage into two equal halves through the hard 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 of the cabbage quarters, like this:

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

(Discard the core of the cabbage, which is excessively tough).

How to Slice Cabbage:

For dishes where you want thin ribbons of cabbage, the next step is to use a sharp knife or mandolin to cut, laying the quarter on a flat cut 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 thin strips on the left, and the mandolin-cut long 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 uniform slices.

You have to have some crazy good knife skills and a super sharp chef’s knife to come anywhere close to what you can do with a mandolin.

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:

The thin slices are also wonderful for a quick stir fry.

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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