Asian Cucumber Salad

Asian Cucumber Salad – a five-minute recipe

This easy Asian-style Cucumber Salad is fresh and zesty. The cucumber is dressed with sweetened lime juice, soy sauce and Thai fish sauce flavoured with garlic and chilli.

This salad is exactly what I want to eat in January. Following the culinary excesses of Christmas and the New Year, I am looking for fresh and healthy, flavour-packed dishes which are quick and easy to prepare. This salad takes only five minutes to make and has a fantastic chilli-spiced, sweet and salty dressing to enhance the crunchy cucumber.

Although this Cucumber Salad is Asian-inspired, I quite often use it as an accompaniment to simple grilled fish, such as salmon steaks, but it would also go well with grilled chicken or meat. It is also great as a snack as it has that hit of taste and chilli heat which means that you feel satisfied without taking in lots of calories.

• Easy Shortbread Recipe
• Cranberry Gin
• Beetroot Soup with Coconut
• Leek and Potato Soup with Fresh Chives
• Blackberry Gin

What you need to know about this recipe

• This is one of the easiest salads that you can make. It really is just a question of peeling and chopping the cucumber, mixing the dressing and combining.
• Make sure that you use a ceramic or glass bowl for this salad. If you use a metal bowl, it may react with the ingredients.
• This salad is not vegetarian as the recipe includes Thai fish sauce. If you are a vegetarian, you can substitute the fish sauce with an additional tablespoon of soy sauce. In fact, that will make the recipe vegan.
• If you don’t like chilli, you can leave it out.
• You can eat this salad immediately. However, I think the flavour improves if it is kept for an hour or two. Don’t leave it longer than that as the salty dressing will draw the liquid out of the cucumber. That will mean that there is a lot of liquid in the salad and the flavours will be diluted.

Other easy salads

I love salads and eat them all the year around – not just in summer. If you like this recipe, you might also like some of my other salad recipes.

• Aubergine Salad with Soy and Honey – A great, easy oriental-style salad with a fantastic hit of umami flavour which can be made in 15 minutes.
• Broad Bean Salad – An easy salad combining the freshness of the beans with salty feta cheese.
• Raw Beetroot and Carrot Salad – This is another quick and easy raw salad which has a zesty citrus dressing.
• Red Cabbage Coleslaw – An easy raw salad which includes red cabbage, carrot and apple.
• Roasted Pepper Salad – This simple vegan salad can be served either warm or at room temperature.
• Spiced Carrot Salad with Honey and Lemon – This salad takes a bit longer to make as the carrots are roasted. It is worth it as the lemon, honey and North African spices work magic on this versatile vegetable.
• Roasted Beetroot Salad with Yogurt and Tahini – Again, this salad takes a bit longer to make but it is worth it for the intense flavour of the roasted beetroot.

Asian Cucumber Salad recipe

Print