Vietnamese-style chicken slaw with nuoc cham dressing

Half a cabbage, a couple of poached chicken breasts, and a dressing that bites back. That’s the whole idea, and it’s one I’ve been making in some form since I spent a summer cooking through a stack of Southeast Asian cookbooks I picked up at a market stall on Beaumont Street, Hamilton. Nothing fancy. Just good balance — fat, acid, heat, a little sweetness — and vegetables that still have some crunch when they hit the table.

Vietnamese-style chicken slaw is the kind of lunch I’ll knock together on a Sunday and eat across three days. It holds well in the fridge, it’s genuinely filling without sitting heavy, and the nuoc cham dressing keeps everything honest. Not one of those salads you eat and forget about twenty minutes later.

Why this Vietnamese chicken slaw works

The short version: contrast. You’ve got the slightly sweet, mild crunch of cabbage against the shredded chicken, which absorbs the dressing rather than repelling it. Then herbs — proper handfuls, not the little decorative sprigs you see on lesser versions of this dish. And the nuoc cham brings all of it together: fish sauce for depth, lime for brightness, chilli for heat, a touch of sugar to round the edges.

Nutritionally, this sits in solid territory. Lean chicken protein, a heap of brassica vegetables, fresh herbs that contribute more than most people give them credit for, and a dressing made without any added oils worth worrying about. If you want to know more about why the fibre content of a slaw like this matters beyond just feeling full, the piece we ran on fibre is worth a read. The short answer: cabbage does a lot of work.

One wry observation before we get into it: I have seen recipes for nuoc cham that call for a blender. Don’t muck about with a blender. It takes ninety seconds to mix by hand in a jar and the texture is better for it.

Ingredients

• 2 medium chicken breasts (about 500g total)
• 1 stalk lemongrass, bruised
• 3 slices fresh ginger
• 400g wombok (napa cabbage), finely shredded
• 150g red cabbage, finely shredded
• 2 medium carrots, julienned or coarsely grated
• 1 Lebanese cucumber, seeds removed, cut into matchsticks
• 4 spring onions, thinly sliced on the diagonal
• 1 large red chilli, thinly sliced (seeds in or out, your call)
• 1 large handful fresh mint leaves
• 1 large handful fresh coriander leaves and tender stems
• 40g roasted, unsalted peanuts, roughly chopped
• 2 tbsp crispy fried shallots (from any Asian grocer or good supermarket)
• Nuoc cham dressing:
• 3 tbsp fish sauce
• 3 tbsp fresh lime juice (about 2 limes)
• 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 1½ tsp caster sugar
• 1 clove garlic, finely grated
• 1 small red chilli, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp water

Serves 4 as a main lunch

Method

1. Put the chicken breasts in a saucepan with enough cold water to cover. Add the lemongrass and ginger. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat — do not boil it hard, that’s how you get dry, stringy chicken — then reduce heat to low, cover, and poach for 12 minutes. Remove from heat and let the chicken rest in the liquid for another 8 minutes. It’ll finish cooking in the residual heat without toughening up.
2. While the chicken poaches, make the nuoc cham. Combine fish sauce, lime juice, rice wine vinegar, sugar, garlic, chilli and water in a small jar or bowl. Stir until the sugar dissolves completely. Taste as you go — it should hit sour, salty, a little sweet and hot, roughly in that order. If it tastes flat, add a touch more lime. If it’s too aggressive, add a splash more water.
3. Lift the chicken out of the poaching liquid and set aside to cool for five minutes, then shred into roughly 2cm pieces using two forks. You want some texture — not baby food, not chunks. Pull it apart so it’ll soak up the dressing properly.
4. In a large bowl, combine the wombok, red cabbage, carrot and cucumber. Add about two-thirds of the nuoc cham and toss thoroughly. Taste. Add more dressing if it needs it — the cabbage absorbs a fair amount.
5. Add the shredded chicken to the slaw and toss again. Fold through most of the spring onion, chilli, mint and coriander, keeping a little of each back for the top.
6. Pile onto a large serving platter or into individual bowls. Scatter over the reserved herbs, spring onion, sliced chilli, peanuts and crispy shallots. Serve immediately or refrigerate (without the peanuts and shallots — add those just before serving or they go soft).

A note on the chicken and how to poach it properly

Poaching gets dismissed as boring, which is a shame. Done properly — and I mean a genuine, lazy simmer, not a rolling boil — it produces chicken that’s actually juicy. The lemongrass in the poaching water isn’t just there for aromatics, though it helps; it keeps you honest about keeping the heat low, because the moment you crank it, the water boils and the chicken tightens. Ten minutes of patience here makes a real difference to the finished dish.

If you’ve got leftover roast chicken, use it. Pull the breast and thigh meat and shred it roughly. The dressing is strong enough to work with slightly richer, darker meat and it cuts the fattiness rather than competing with it. Same logic applies to the chargrilled chicken I put up a while back — leftovers from that would go brilliantly here.

The nuoc cham: getting the balance right

Fish sauce is the one ingredient people are sometimes cautious about. And fair enough — straight from the bottle it smells confronting. But diluted with lime juice, vinegar and a little water, it becomes the backbone of one of the best dressings in any cuisine. According to Nutrition Australia’s guidance on fermented foods, fermented condiments like fish sauce contribute small amounts of beneficial compounds alongside their flavour punch.

The balance you’re after: the dressing should taste a little more acidic than you think it needs to be, because the cabbage and chicken will absorb and soften it once everything’s tossed together. If it’s perfectly balanced in the jar, it’ll taste mild on the slaw. Err on the side of punchy.

Don’t substitute soy sauce for fish sauce and call it the same dressing. I know some recipes do this. It’s not the same. If you’re cooking for someone who avoids fish products, a light coconut aminos works better than soy and keeps more of the original character.

Serving ideas and variations

Straight from the bowl is fine for lunch. If you’re feeding people at a table, a platter presentation with everything piled high and the garnishes scattered over looks the part without any extra work.

For a more substantial main, serve alongside a small bowl of steamed jasmine rice or, if you want to keep things lighter, rice paper on the side so people can roll their own. Both options work. The green papaya and chicken salad on the site uses a similar Southeast Asian flavour base if you want to rotate between the two through the week.

Variation worth trying: swap the chicken for cooked tiger prawns. Use about 400g, halved lengthways, and toss straight in without any extra cooking. The nuoc cham handles seafood just as well, and the whole thing comes together in under fifteen minutes. For prawn-forward cooking inspiration, the snapper with lemongrass coconut sauce shows how well those Southeast Asian aromatics translate to seafood.

If you want to push the vegetables further, thin strips of sugar snap peas or finely sliced snow peas add good colour and sweetness. Shaved fennel works too — sounds odd against the Asian dressing, but the aniseed note is subtle and plays well with mint. Try it once before you decide it’s a bad idea.

Storing and making ahead

The slaw base — cabbage, carrot, cucumber — keeps well in the fridge for up to three days, undressed. Mix the nuoc cham in a jar and it keeps for a week. Shredded poached chicken will hold in an airtight container for three days easily. Keep them separate until you’re ready to eat, toss and add the garnishes fresh each time.

The eatforhealth.gov.au Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend five serves of vegetables daily for adults. A generous bowl of this slaw gets you most of the way there in one sitting, which is a decent return for twenty minutes of prep.

Make it once. You’ll find yourself making it most weeks after that. Anyway — get into it.

— Dave Forsythe, Golden Door Living kitchen