Last year was all about the dense bean salad. This year — I’m calling it — is the summer of the ribbon salad. Although peeling a carrot or zucchini into long strands isn’t anything particularly new (hello, zoodles), Cassie Yeung, a TikTok creator and the author of the forthcoming cookbook Bad B*tch in the Kitch, is partially responsible for making this technique go viral with the ribbon carrot salad she first posted on TikTok this past April.
Yeung’s salad is simple enough. It pairs long and flexible strands of carrots with grated garlic, green onions, sesame seeds, and a dressing composed of rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and chile crisp. It’s refreshing and light and has a slight pickle flavor, making it a perfect summer salad.
“I just didn’t think that this was going to be something that blew up,” Yeung says. She was initially inspired by carrots from the farmers market, which she often peels into ribbons and adds to homemade poke bowls. The salad recipe is in her upcoming cookbook, so she’s been testing and perfecting it for well over a year. “I never really thought to film it and post it because, at the end of the day, it’s [just] a carrot,” Yeung says. In fact, she debated even including the recipe in the cookbook because she felt it was too simple. “But it makes [the virality] so much more exciting because it’s such a simple ingredient,” she says.
Yeung’s initial carrot salad video has amassed 19 million views and over two million likes. She’s also introduced riffs on the salad — one with red onions and dill, another with daikon that replicates banh mi pickles — and those videos have amassed over two million views. A slew of other creators have followed suit, crafting their own ribbon salads and tagging Yeung as their inspiration.
Yeung believes her salad’s virality is due in part to the accessibility of carrots, and in part to the presentation. “It’s just really playful,” Yeung says. “It’s almost like you’re eating noodles. The way something is cut and prepared completely changes the experience for me.”
The same is true in Lao cuisine, where Luang Prabang-style papaya salad cut into long ribbons completely differs from its Thai counterparts, which are typically shredded. The texture makes for a completely different dining experience.
“Luang Prabang was the royal capital of Laos up until 1975, so the cuisine is about taking simple things and making it elegant,” explains chef Ann Ahmed, the owner and operator of Gai Noi, a Laotian restaurant in Minneapolis. “When I conceptualized Gai Noi, I knew the heart of it was Luang Prabang and the menu had to reflect that.”
The Luang Prabang-style papaya salad on the Gai Noi menu begins with long strands of green papaya that is dressed in a mixture of lime juice, pounded chiles, fermented fish sauce, and pops of tomato. The flavor is spicy and savory and pungent, but the experience of eating it differs from a standard thum muk hoong because of the noodle-like strands of papaya.
“The style of ribbon holds more flavor because it has more surface space,” Ahmed says. “The sauce sits in the curves. It’s pretty genius.”
Although papaya and carrots are great introductions to a ribbon salad, pretty much any long vegetable can be adapted for it, like zucchini and daikon. “It’s easy to do and it’s all in the wrist,” Ahmed says. “The thickness is what matters. Make sure you get a really good peeler.”
Aside from swapping out the vegetable base, you can also completely customize the salad dressing to form new ribbon salads. “The carrots become a vessel for any sauce you like,” Yeung says, noting she’s experimented with a Mediterranean-style carrot salad and wants to attempt a kimchi version next. “I think that a lot of cultures can intertwine their own flavors. That’s the best part of it because at the end of the day, it’s so simple — so you can really get creative with it.”
