This French Carrot Salad is a vibrant and colorful mess of grated carrots and fresh herbs tossed in a bright and zesty lemon-dijon dressing. It’s simple, fresh and absolutely delicious!
⭐Recipe Highlights⭐
A few things to love about this French Carrot Salad:
- Basic ingredients + easy prep: This recipe is further proof that you don’t actually need much more than simple, fresh ingredients to make delicious food. Grating the carrots may take a bit of time and elbow grease, but it’s not hard overall.
- Vibrant & healthy: Carrots are naturally delicious and full of health benefits! They are a great source is so many vitamins and minerals like Vitamin A, B6 and biotin. This salad is a healthy and satisfying way of eating your veggies.
- Versatile Serving Options: There’s a reason why carrot salad is so popular in France! Find it readily available in bistros, restaurants, groceries stores because it’s simple, delicious and good with just about anything.
Ingredients
- Carrot: If you own a food processor with a fitted grating attachment, put it to use to grate your carrots in no time. If not, no worries! Just use a box grater (use the large holes) or a julienne peeler instead
- Herbs – I used fresh parsley and spring onions, but you can play around with different herbs based on what you like and what you have.
- Olive Oil – Just like with any dressing or vinaigrette that you don’t cook I recommend extra virgin olive oil for max flavor.
- Lemon Juice – A small amount of fresh lemon juice really perks everything up!
- Dijon Mustard – Can you really make a French salad without dijon? Even if you could – why would you want to?!
- Sweetener – Traditional recipes typically use honey, but if you want to make a vegan or low FODMAP friendly salad, use maple syrup or plain sugar instead.
- Salt – Start with the recommended amount, but taste and season at the end to make it right for you.
Optional Additions: Many French Carrot Salad recipes also include a handful of golden raisins and a pinch of cumin. Raisins add a sweet and tangy element with a chewier texture while cumin adds a nutty, warming flavor to balance out the other bright and perky flavors.
Nuts and seeds are also great for the extra crunch! Try chopped walnuts, almonds, pine nuts, sunflower seeds or roasted pepitas. I added a sprinkling of black sesame seeds to my salad to pack in a little more nutrition.
How to Make this French Carrot Salad
This salad really is a no brainer to prepare! In very basic steps, all you need to do is:
- make the dressing
- grate the carrots & chop the herbs
- mix everything together
Dressing: Whisk together olive oil, lemon juice, mustard, salt and sweetener.
Ingredient Prep: Combine grated or shredded carrot with chopped herbs in a large bowl.
Combine: Pour the prepared dressing over the salad.
Toss: Mix the dressing into the salad until well combined.
More Simple Sides & Salads You might Also Like
- Tomato Arugula Salad with Walnuts
- Malfouf Salad (Lebanese Cabbage Slaw)
- Piyaz (Turkish White Bean Salad)
- Sumac Onions (Turkish Onion Salad)
- Vietnamese Pickled Carrots and Daikon (Đồ Chua)
- Shirazi Salad (Salad-e Shirazi)
- Garlic & Chili Sautéed Kale with Toasted Cashews
Enjoy!
Let me know if you try this carrot salad recipe! I’d love to hear what you made with it and how it turned out! Please leave a comment and review with your thoughts and suggestions for me and future readers.
French Carrot Salad Recipe
Dress up raw carrots a simple lemon-dijon vinaigrette and fresh herbs with this French Carrot Salad.
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil (30ml)
- 1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice, or more, to taste
- 1/2 tsp kosher or sea salt
- 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1/4 tsp honey or pure maple syrup*
- 1 pound carrots grated (450g) or 4 cups measured after grating
- 2 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
- 2 spring onions, finely chopped
Instructions
- In a small cup or bowl, whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice, salt, mustard and honey/maple syrup. Set aside.
- Add grated carrots, parsley and spring onions to a large salad bowl.
- Pour the lemon dressing over the top of the salad. Toss everything together to combine - make sure the salad is evenly coated in the dressing. Taste and season with salt and pepper if needed.
- Serve right away. If you have the time, cover and set aside for about 20 minutes to let carrot mixture marinate in the dressing for more flavor. Toss again just before serving and enjoy.
- Keep leftover salad store in an airtight container in the refrigerator up to four days.
Notes
Recipe Credit: Adapted from David Lebovitz
Carrots Prep: Grate the carrots by hand with a box grater using the large holes, with a julienne peeler or in a food processor with the grating blade attachment.
Other Herbs: Instead of or in addition to parsley try this with tarragon, chives, chervil.
Make it Low FODMAP: #1 Use pure maple syrup or sugar - not honey. #2 Make sure to only use the green parts of the spring onion/scallions or use fresh chives instead.
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