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And you just need four ingredients to make it yourself.

Reviewed by Dietitian Jessica Ball, M.S., RD

Key Points

• Josh Homme’s red cabbage salad is a simple recipe inspired by his mother’s cooking.
• The salad features red cabbage, white vinegar, salt, pepper and Roquefort cheese.
• Cabbage is a gut-healthy choice that pairs well with many other dishes.

Queens of the Stone Age has been rocking and rolling since the late 1990s, but you might not realize that frontman Josh Homme is more than a performer—he’s a bit of a foodie. In fact, back in 2011, Homme appeared on long-time friend Anthony Bourdain’s cooking and travel show No Reservationsand the rocker took Bourdain on a culinary tour of the Mojave Desert region of California.

Back in season seven of No Reservationsone episode closed with Bourdain, Homme and company cooking in the kitchen of Rancho De La Luna, a recording studio in Joshua Tree, California. As everyone whips up their favorite dishes, Bourdain brings up a simple veggie salad that Homme loves to make.

“Josh is very excited about his mom’s recipe for red cabbage salad with vinegar, cracked pepper and crumbled Roquefort dressing,” Bourdain says in the voiceover. And the recipe really is that simple. To make it, Homme finely chops a head of red cabbage and dresses it with white vinegar, salt, pepper and crumbles of Roquefort, a tangy, savory variety of blue cheese.

While no official recipe for the salad exists on the internet, there are reports that, in unreleased B-roll footage from the episode, Homme elaborated a bit on how his mom’s red cabbage salad is made.

The Queens of the Stone Age singer and songwriter, who released a new single, “Easy Street,” with his band last month, allegedly told Bourdain it’s important to toss the shredded cabbage in the white vinegar ahead of time. This allows it to marinate for a while, letting the vinegar work its way into the cabbage to break it down a bit and soften its crunch. Only then, do you add salt and pepper and crumbles of Roquefort, then mix the whole thing together.

The salad has stayed popular throughout the years with fans of the rock band. During 2025’s Alive in the Catacombs Tourthere were often unexplained red cabbages on stage, leaving fans to recall the recipe in Reddit threads. “I remember him making a cabbage salad when he was with Anthony Bourdain,” one redditor said. “He said it was his mother’s recipe.”

The Homme family red cabbage salad sounds pretty straightforward to us, and like one that allows some room to experiment to find your own personal blend of ingredient amounts. And, since cabbage is great for gut health thanks to its fiber content. Plus, its vitamin C content can help support immune health and reduce inflammation, making it a perfect ingredient to make the center of your salad.

But is this cabbage salad something Homme eats before a show? “I never eat before the show,” he told Bourdain in the episode. “Rock and roll doesn’t eat food… Being full and just feeling loose about yourself? It’s not possible.”

So, save the red cabbage salad for a night when we’re not performing on stage for thousands of fans? Noted. Still, it’s a perfect dish for summer and fall since red cabbage is in season during both seasons. Here are a few more recipes to help you get through a head: