Asian Cucumber Salad
So, we all know how my homemade sushi experience went. If you don’t read the blog regularly, you can find it here and have a laugh. Let’s just say, I’ll leave the sushi making to the professionals. This week though, I’m at it again with a fresh recipe for all my foodies and spice lovers featuring one of my favorite vegetables out there.
Cucumbers are a staple of my diet. I absolutely love that you can eat them in so many ways, not to mention they are super low-calorie. Who doesn’t love that?! I even featured my go-to cucumber snack as one of my first blog posts!
Today I’ll be showing you how to make an Asian Cucumber Salad. It’s tasty, easy to make not, AND it looks pretty cool too.
Here are a few key things you need to know before making this salad:
– When making the cuts, place chopsticks on both sides and this acts as a barrier so that it is impossible to cut all the way through to the bottom. Cut at a 45-degree angle to make sure you never fully cut through the cucumber.
– Once you flip the cucumber to the second side, make more shallow cuts. This helps the cucumber keep a better shape after salted. You can also choose to use mini cucumbers if you wish, just make more shallow cuts for these.
– Salting and allowing the cucumbers to rest will draw out the water in the cucumber. Keep in mind that after salting, the cucumbers will become more loose and spread apart more easily.
– Chili crisp is one of my favorite ingredients because it embodies all of the amazing things about chili oil, except it’s not actually very spicy. That is why 2 tbsp of it doesn’t make this dish overly spicy.
– Gochugaru is a type of Korean chili flake. If you don’t have this you can replace with any other type of chili flakes you have.
INGREDIENTS
• 6 mini cucumbers
• 1½ tbsp salt
• 2 tbsp chili crisp
• 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp Korean chili flakes
• 2 cloves grated garlic
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp sesame seeds
DIRECTIONS
1. Cut off the ends on each cucumber.
2. Place two wooden chopsticks around the cucumber to use as a guide for cutting.
3. Make thin, diagonal cuts along the cucumber until your knife touches the chopsticks.
4. Flip cucumber around and make diagonal cuts again, this time don’t cut all the way down to the chopstick. I roughly cut about halfway through the cucumber.
5. Add salt and allow the cucumbers to rest for 30 minutes to draw out moisture.
6. Rinse off all the salt thoroughly 1-2 times then dry with a paper towel.
7. Add the remaining ingredients and mix
Enjoy!!! As always, if you make this recipe I would love to hear what you thought and repost. Just tag your pics @AskHeatherMariannaBlog on IG.
XOXO,
Heather