Our Best Cucumber Salad Recipes

What’s a good side for barbecue ribs? Hot dogs? Cajun shrimp boil? Bulgogi? Tonkatsu? Tandoori chicken?

The answer — for these or any summer main — is a cucumber salad.

That’s because cucumbers are a cooling counterpart for hot food and hot weather. Their juicy crunch cuts through char, spice and richness, and mixing them into a salad doesn’t take much time or even any cooking. But there are just a few tricks to ensure they’re utterly refreshing.

Here are seven ways to take your cucumber salads to new, more exciting heights.

1. Concentrate their flavor.

Cucumbers’ high water content — about 95 percent — makes them hydrating. But it has a downside: It can turn dressings or sauces into puddles. Sprinkling cucumbers in a colander with a big pinch of salt draws out their liquid, leaving them crunchier, sweeter and more concentrated in flavor.

Try these recipes:

• Top cucumbers with an ice pack to push out their liquid as they chill for a perfect foil to hot, seared halloumi and crispy croutons. | Recipe: Cucumber-Tomato Salad With Seared Halloumi and Olive Oil Croutons

• Draining cucumbers makes them especially snappy, and a great textural complement to shrimp. | Recipe: Smashed Cucumber, Avocado and Shrimp Salad

• Salted cucumbers don’t risk diluting a velvety peanut sauce that’s bold with soy sauce and raw garlic. | Recipe: Cucumber Salad With Roasted Peanuts and Chile

2. Keep some peel.

Peeling cucumbers in alternating strips keeps them from getting mushy, while the exposed area can soak up seasonings. It’s a win-win.

Try these recipes:

• Dressing striped cucumbers with vinegar, red onion and dill gives them the flavor of a pickle and the crispness of a salad. | Recipe: Cucumber Salad

• Peel the Persian cucumbers in stripes here, and the salad will keep for up to two days in your refrigerator. | Recipe: Salad-e Shirazi (Persian Cucumber, Tomato and Onion Salad)

• Instead of using a peeler, you can run the tines of a fork along the cucumber’s skin to create thin channels for a spicy lime dressing to drip into. | Recipe: Tomato Salad With Cucumber and Ginger

3. Smash them.

Smashing cucumbers with the side of a knife or a rolling pin is a classic technique throughout Asia. It’s not only fun, but it also makes for a better end product, as the craggy surfaces better soak up more dressing than smooth, slick and slippery slices.

Try these recipes:

• Take a cue from the many cucumber salads throughout China, and dress rough-edged pieces with soy sauce, rice or black vinegar, garlic and sesame oil. | Recipe: Chinese Smashed Cucumbers With Sesame Oil and Garlic

• Kimchi brine quickly soaks into smashed cucumbers, lending funk and flavor. | Recipe: Smacked Cucumber ‘Quick Kimchi’

• While you’re crushing cucumbers, smash some raw green beans. After salting and draining, they’ll be crisp-tender — not at all fibrous, waxy or stringy. | Recipe: Classic Chicken Schnitzel With Smashed Cucumbers

4. Pair them with other juicy fruits …

Even though they aren’t always treated like one, cucumbers are a fruit, so pair them with brighter, tangier and sweeter fruits. Cucumbers’ subtle savoriness and not-so-subtle crunch accentuate plush summer plums, cherries, peaches, melons and more.

Try these recipes:

• Incorporating cucumber into the classic Mediterranean watermelon-feta salad heightens the dish’s sweet-savoriness. | Recipe: Cucumber, Melon and Watermelon Salad

• Tart pomegranate seeds play well with tiny pieces of cucumber. | Recipe: Cucumber Pomegranate Salad

• Temper the intense flavors of peaches and a gochujang dressing with cucumbers and mozzarella. | Recipe: Peach, Cucumber and Mozzarella Salad With Gochujang Vinaigrette

5. … especially the other summer staple that’s really a fruit: tomato.

Tomatoes and cucumbers, a summertime power couple, have been cooling us off forever in dishes including Greek salad, Persian shirazi or Indian kachumber. Their strength is in their complementary attributes: Tomatoes’ acidity brightens the cucumbers, while the cucumbers tone down tomatoes’ sharper edges.

Try these recipes:

• Balance the caramelized char of seared cucumbers, corn and shrimp with fat wedges of fresh tomato. | Recipe: Spicy Shrimp With Blistered Cucumbers, Corn and Tomato

• Here, the sweet-tart juices of cucumbers, tomatoes and lime marinate raw fish. | Recipe: Ceviche

• Olives, capers and feta add briny pops and heft to a salad of raw tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers. | Recipe: Greek Salad

6. Contrast with creaminess.

For a salad that’s soft and luxurious rather than all crunch, add something creamy. That might be a dressing rich with buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream or coconut milk; a milky cheese like burrata or ricotta; or slivers of silken tofu or avocado.

Try these recipes:

• These chile oil-dressed cucumbers might be too spicy on their own but not when swiped through an herby yogurt. | Recipe: Spicy Cucumbers With Yogurt, Lemon and Herbs

• Buttermilk, yogurt and lemon come together in the tangy dressing that coats this salad. | Recipe: Creamy Cucumber Salad

• When cucumbers pair up with avocados, little else is needed. | Recipe: Cucumber-Avocado Salad

7. Toss everything with herbs.

Soft-stemmed herbs like cilantro, parsley and dill are exactly what laid-back cucumbers need — bursts of summer-fresh flavor — so add them by the fistful.

Try these recipes

• When it comes to adding greens, skip lettuce in favor of a punchier mix, like cucumbers, cranberries and roughly chopped dill. | Recipe: Roasted Salmon With Dill and Cucumber Salad

• In this make-ahead, cook-out-ready salad, finely chopped parsley softens into the vinaigrette so there’s no worry of wilting. | Recipe: Saladu Nebbe (Black-Eyed Pea Salad With Tomatoes and Cucumbers)

• Make a salad version of sabzi khordan, the abundant platter of fresh herbs, radishes, walnuts and feta found at many Persian meals. | Recipe: Herb and Radish Salad With Feta and Walnuts

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