Oh, this salad is oh, so flavorful. It’s got everything you want from a recipe: spice, zest, acid, sweet, tang, and more in every bite. Besides the impressive and refreshing flavors, this salad offers a variety of colors and textures. That makes for a more enjoyable eating experience with the added benefit of getting the various antioxidant compounds from the different-colored ingredients. Don’t let the recipe make you think that this is difficult to make, either. It comes together in a matter of 10-15 minutes and truly showcases the flavor of mango.

Traditionally, Thai mango salad is made with green mango, which is shredded or thinly sliced and mixed with red onion, cilantro, peanuts, fish sauce, and lime juice. The green mango, which is unripe, takes a similar role to green papaya, which is also unripe. Green mangos have a firm, crunchy texture and are quite tart. That’s why they are common in chutneys or pickles. Because green mangos are not as readily available in your average grocery store, we elected to use ripe mangos, which offer a juicy sweetness that complements the kick and punch of the other ingredients. Additionally, we replace the peanuts with raw cashews and, for obvious reasons, we omitted the fish sauce.

We always support culinary creativity at all times. If you feel that you have a cleanse-approved ingredient that would work well with the ones in this salad, feel free to add it in. What we do encourage is that you maintain somewhat uniform cuts for the ingredients. Slice the cucumbers and mangos thinly and on a diagonal so that they can be similar to the thinly sliced onions. Lastly, we only included red pepper flakes, not Thai chilies, because we care about not burning your taste buds off!