French carrot salad (AIP, paleo, vegan, whole30)

This French carrot salad recipe is healthy and fresh. This easy and raw recipe makes a great cold side dish or starter. It uses shredded carrots and apples.

Carrot salad is a real classic here in France. So much that you can find premade packed French carrot salads next to sandwiches in the packed lunch area at any grocery store.

French carrot salad is often on the menu of packed lunches at work along with sandwiches. It's also often a starter for dinner at home.

Ingredients

• carrots
• apples. Try to use sweet apples like for example Fuji or Royal Gala or any other sweet kind.
• lemon juice
• extra virgin olive oil
• pinch of sea salt

Traditional French carrot salad is made only with carrots (no apples). So feel free to replace the apples with more carrots in this recipe if you want to stay true to the traditional version.

To adjust servings, you can either the tool on the recipe card or just respect the ratio of ⅓ apple, ⅔ carrots.

How to grate the carrots and apples

The texture in this recipe depends on how you grate the carrots and apples. Good news: there's no particular rule for that. It's just a matter of personal preferences.

You can run the carrots through your food processor using the grating attachment. Or you can grate the carrots and apples on your box grater.

Some French people prefer to grate the carrots on the large holes of the box grater whereas others prefer to use the small ones. Though, try not to choose extra small holes otherwise the apples will end up in purée instead of grated.

Begin by shredding the carrots first. Why? Because gratted apples oxidise (turn brown) very quickly. To prevent that, once you have grated the apples, immediately pour the lemon juice dressing over them.

Other salad recipes

• Leeks salad (AIP, paleo, whole30, vegan)
• Beetroot and Feta salad (gluten free, vegetarian)
• Shrimp salad (AIP, paleo, whole30)
• Beetroot carpaccio (AIP, paleo, vegan)