NY Times Famous Broccoli Salad - with Sesame, Cumin & Garlic (2024)

This is a famous Broccoli Salad from the New York Times. Seeing all the amazing reviews, I tried it once, had a nibble, and wasn’t convinced. But then I kept nibbling and couldn’t stop. I’m now convinced. (And I’ve made it countless times since!)

Famous NY Times Broccoli Salad with cumin, garlic and sesame

Welcome to Day 2 of the RecipeTin Eats 30 Day Holiday Salad Marathon, a day where I’m bringing you something simple yet intriguing and little bit different!

It’s a wildly popular raw Broccoli Salad by Melissa Clark of New York Times Cooking. Red wine vinegar lightly “cooks” the raw broccoli, then it’s marinated in an intensely flavoured mix of cumin, garlic, sesame and olive oil.

It is so unexpectedly tasty, unique, and I keep making it over and over so I wanted to share the recipe with you!

Not a fan of raw broccoli? This may not be the dish to quite convert you. Try this one instead, where the creamy dressing really rounds out the crunchiness like a coleslaw. Otherwise, lightly steam the broccoli instead – it’s worth making just for the dressing!

What you need for the NY Times Broccoli Salad

Here’s what you need for this broccoli salad. Part of the appeal and is how few ingredients are called for to make such an interesting salad, though I do forewarn you that there is marinating time involved.

Regular readers will be unsurprised to hear that I tweaked the ingredient quantities a bit… here’s what I changed from the source recipe (and why):

• (Far) less oil – I reduced the original 3/4 cup (185 ml) olive oil which to me – and many hundreds of commenters on the recipe – is an obscenely excessive amount of oil. We don’t need our broccoli swimming in oil! I’ve cut it down to 1/3 cup which is still on the generous side by my usual standards, but the right amount to bring the required richness and mouthfeel. You can go as low as 1/4 cup however;

• Less salt – Similarly, I reduced from 1 tsp to 3/4 tsp because it was a tad salty for my taste. You could reduce even further to 1/2 tsp. (NB. Make sure you use kosher/cooking salt, not table salt which is much finer. If you use table salt you would need to reduce to just under 1/2 tsp); and

• Doubled red wine vinegar from 1 1/2 teaspoons to 1 tablespoon. 1 1/2 teaspoons is such a small amount it did nothing from what I could tell. I increased it to cut through the richness of the oil and also to “cook” the broccoli a bit better.

How to make the NY Times Broccoli Salad

The making part is straightforward but a bit unique, calling for a light “pickling” of the broccoli before marinating in a heavily flavoured garlic-cumin-sesame olive oil dressing:

1. Light pickle – Toss the broccoli salad in the red wine vinegar and set aside for 10 minutes. It has the effect of slightly softening the surface, sort of like Ceviche. But more importantly, we get vinegar tang into the broccoli before dousing with the garlicky olive oil;

2. Infuse oil – Infuse the olive oil with garlic, cumin and sesame flavours, by frying until golden brown. This literally takes 30 seconds;

3. Toss – Pour over the broccoli and toss well. Love those crispy golden garlic bits!

4. Marinate – Mix and leave for at least 1 hour or up to 2 days, to “marinate”. This is when the flavour magic happens and the garlic/cumin/sesame flavours penetrates the broccoli. It’s one of those rare salads that gets better with time!

Cooked broccoli option – For those of you wary of or dead-set adverse to raw broccoli, just steam the florets lightly before proceeding with the recipe. Please don’t boil, it will make the florets watery and dilute the flavour!

I didn’t even realise how much I liked it …

I first made this recipe out of sheer curiosity, wondering why people rated it so highly. With the first bite freshly made, without letting it sit and soak in the marinade, I wasn’t convinced at all.

Post-marinating for 1 hour, I had my second bite, and thought it was fine but I still didn’t understand the rave reviews.

Then I just kept picking at it, eating more and more, and…….wait! I realised I literally could not stop eating it. It’s bizarrely addictive. I still don’t quite rave about it to friends because it’s not everyone’s thing. But I am quietly addicted to it, and you might just become so too.

So I want to share it, quietly, with you, my internet friends. 😇

Love to know what you think if you try it! – Nagi x

PS. Remember, raw broccoli haters, steam your broccoli first. This is not the recipe to try to convert you into a raw broccoli lover! Use this Creamy Raw Broccoli Salad with Bacon instead. You will like that one, I promise!

Watch how to make it

Captioning typo alert! The liquid I pour over the broccoli at 10 seconds is the red wine vinegar, not sesame oil! 🙂

Life of Dozer

He was licking his lips until he got close enough to realise what it was….