Chopped Chicken and Cabbage Jars with Skyr, Mint, and Sesame
Finely shredded cabbage, grated carrot, and diced cucumber folded into a thick skyr dressing sharp with lemon, garlic, and toasted cumin, with pulled chicken, a great deal of mint, and toasted sesame over the top.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
I built this for the days when lunch has to be waiting for me, already made, because if it is not I will stand at the counter eating crackers instead. Everything in the jar is cut small and dressed at the same time, so it settles overnight rather than falling apart. Cabbage is what makes that possible. Shredded fine and salted for a few minutes, it softens just enough to take a thick dressing and then holds its crunch through Thursday, which no lettuce I have ever bought will do. The chicken is poached breast, or whatever is left of a roasted bird from Sunday, pulled into short shreds with my fingers.
It eats cold and sharp. The skyr goes thick around everything, lemon and grated garlic cutting a line through it, and mint in a quantity that surprises people the first time, close to a third of a cup across four jars. Cumin toasted in a dry pan for thirty seconds sits underneath all of that and gives the bowl a warm, dusty note that keeps it from tasting like a deli counter. The sesame seeds go on last and stay dry and toasty against the wet dressing. Carrot sweetens as it sits, and by the second day the whole thing has gone rounder and the mint has quieted down.
This belongs to a Sunday afternoon, made in one bowl and divided into four jars while the kitchen is still open and the board is still out. It travels well, it needs no reheating at all, and it holds in a bag for a couple of hours if the morning gets complicated. I make it most in the weeks when the mornings are rushed and the afternoons run long, and I have learned to be generous with the mint, because the jar you open on Thursday wants more of it than the jar you opened on Monday. A fresh squeeze of lemon over the last one brings it all back.
Ingredients
- 2 cups pulled cooked chicken (about 10 oz), torn into short shreds
- 1 3/4 cups plain skyr
- 1/2 small green cabbage (about 10 oz), shredded as finely as you can
- 2 medium carrots, coarsely grated
- 1/2 English cucumber, cut into small dice
- 1/4 cup sesame seeds, toasted
- 1/3 cup mint leaves, chopped just before folding
- 4 scallions, sliced thin on an angle
- 2 1/2 tbsp lemon juice, plus the zest of 1 lemon
- 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves, grated to a paste
- 1 tsp ground cumin, toasted in a dry pan
- 1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
- 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
Instructions
- Salt the cabbage first: Quarter and core the cabbage, then shave it as finely as you can with a sharp knife or on the thin blade of a mandoline. Toss the shreds with the salt in a colander and leave them for ten minutes, then squeeze them firmly in your hands over the sink. You want a couple of tablespoons of water out of it. This is what stops the jars from going watery by Wednesday.
- Toast the sesame and the cumin: Put the sesame seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat and shake the pan almost constantly for two to three minutes, until they smell nutty and the palest ones have gone gold. Tip them onto a plate right away. In the same pan, warm the cumin for about thirty seconds, just until it smells like a spice market rather than a jar, then scrape it into the dressing bowl.
- Mix the dressing: Whisk the skyr with the lemon juice and zest, the grated garlic, the toasted cumin, the olive oil, and the black pepper. It should be thick enough to hold a ribbon on the surface for a second before sinking. If it is stiffer than that, loosen it with a tablespoon of cold water rather than more lemon, so the acid stays where you want it.
- Fold everything together: Add the squeezed cabbage, the grated carrot, the diced cucumber, the scallions, and the chicken to the bowl and fold with a spatula until every shred is coated and the dressing has gone pale green from the herbs. Fold the mint in at the very end, off to one side, so it does not bruise and darken under the weight of everything else.
- Pack the jars: Divide among four wide-mouth quart jars, pressing gently so there are no air pockets, and leave an inch of headroom at the top. Scatter the toasted sesame over each one and screw the lids on. Keeping the seeds on the surface rather than stirring them through is the difference between crunch on Thursday and soft seeds on Tuesday.
Variations
- Dill and cucumber: Swap the mint for chopped dill and double the cucumber for a cooler, more northern version that suits hot weather.
- Chickpea: Replace the chicken with two cups of rinsed chickpeas, folded in whole so they keep their shape against the shreds.
- Warm spice: Add a teaspoon of smoked paprika and a pinch of cayenne to the dressing along with the cumin, which pushes the jars toward something closer to a spiced slaw.
- Red cabbage and orange: Use red cabbage and add the segments of a peeled orange, which stains the dressing pink and sweetens the whole jar.
Storage & Leftovers
These keep four days in the refrigerator with the lids on tight. The cabbage was salted and squeezed, so the dressing stays thick rather than sliding to the bottom, and the flavor is honestly better on day two than it is an hour after you make it. Give each jar a stir with a fork before you eat it.
If you are making them on Sunday for the whole week, hold the mint and the sesame back in a small bag and add them to each jar as you open it. Four days is the limit for cucumber, which softens and gives up water past that point, so leave it out entirely if you are aiming for Friday.
These do not freeze. The cabbage collapses and the dressing separates into curds and water when it thaws, and there is no stirring that back together. This is a refrigerator recipe, and the good news is that it was built to sit there.
Notes & Tips
- Shred finer than feels necessary: Thick shreds stay stiff and push the dressing off. Shaved thin, cabbage bends around a fork and carries dressing on every surface.
- Grate the garlic, do not chop it: Chopped garlic sits in raw pieces and bites whoever finds one. Grated on a rasp it disappears into the skyr and seasons the whole bowl evenly.
- Toast the sesame in a dry pan, not the oven: Sesame seeds go from gold to bitter in under a minute, and on the stovetop you can see and smell exactly where they are.
- Chop the mint last: Mint darkens within minutes of meeting a knife. Cut it right before it goes in and the jars stay green and smell like mint all week.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- The chicken, the skyr, and the pile of vegetables are doing three different jobs in one jar. The chicken gives it substance, the skyr turns into a dressing that also happens to be most of the calcium here, and the cabbage, carrot, and cucumber bring the bulk and the water that make it feel like a proper meal rather than a snack.
- Skyr is strained until it is thick enough to stand a spoon in, which concentrates both the protein and the calcium into something that behaves like a sauce. That thickness is the reason it clings to shredded cabbage rather than pooling at the bottom of the jar.
- Sesame seeds are one of the highest-calcium things you can scatter over food, and toasting them wakes up the oil inside so a quarter cup smells like the whole kitchen. They go on last so they stay crisp against the wet dressing.
- Cabbage shredded fine and carrot grated coarse give this the fiber and the crunch, and both belong to families whose color and faint sweetness hold up for days in the refrigerator rather than wilting into the dressing.
- Toasted cumin, grated garlic, lemon, and a great deal of mint are what keep a jar of cold vegetables interesting on the fourth day. The acid lifts everything, and the mint is the flavor people notice first and remember afterward.
- As you eat, notice how the jar changes as you dig down, dry sesame and mint at the top giving way to cabbage that has gone soft and sweet in the dressing, and let the last few forkfuls tell you whether you are actually still hungry.
Frequently Asked Questions
What chicken should I use?
Poached breast is the cleanest option and shreds beautifully. Pull it apart while it is still warm and it takes on the dressing better. Leftover roast chicken works just as well and tastes deeper, and rotisserie is fine if you pull the skin off and check the label, since some are seasoned heavily enough to make the salt in the dressing unnecessary.
Can I use Greek yogurt rather than skyr?
Yes, and plain whole-milk or nonfat both work. Skyr is strained further, so it is thicker and holds the shreds more firmly. If you use a looser yogurt, drain it in a coffee filter for twenty minutes or expect a slightly wetter jar, which is no tragedy.
My jars went watery. What did I do wrong?
Almost always the cabbage was not salted and squeezed, or the cucumber was seeded thickly and wet. Ten minutes in salt and a firm squeeze pulls out the water that would otherwise end up in the dressing. Scraping the seeds out of the cucumber with a teaspoon before dicing helps as well.
Can I make this without a mandoline?
Yes. A sharp chef's knife and a little patience gets you there, and the shreds do not have to be uniform. The food processor slicing disc is the fast route, though it bruises the cabbage a little more, so salt it and use it the same day if you go that way.