This cucumber salad is a summer-time life saver. It’s refreshing with a little chilli kick, easy and quick to make, I make it often when the weather is hot and humid.
Cooking Tips: Soak Garlic with Vinegar
I learned this recipe from The Woks of Life, a brilliant Chinese-cooking website.
Once you know how to make it, this smashed cucumber salad can be served in 15 minutes (or 10, if omit the nuts and seeds). When your family members about to ask, ‘That’s all the food?’, then it’s time to make it!
Cooking Tips: Soak Garlic with Vinegar
Have you ever tried using minced raw garlic in a sauce or adding it to a salad (for example, in guacamole), but the garlic flavour was so pungent that it ruined the flavour of the sauce or salad?
The reason is that after the garlic is cut, its cell membrane is torn, releasing the aroma. The more you cut it, the stronger the garlic will be. In this case, we need to suppress the ‘super-excited’ garlic cells that have been cut, and soak them in acidity such as vinegar/lemon juice, so that the garlic aroma will be released moderately, but it won’t be over-power!
Ingredients
- 200 g cucumber
- peanuts
- 1 tsp sesame
For the Sauce
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1 tsp white vinegar
- 1 tsp soy sauce
- ½ tsp sugar
- ½ tsp chilli bean sauce / mapo sauce
- ½ tsp sesame oil
How To Make Chinese Smashed Cucumber Salad in 10 mins
- First, smash the cucumber with a wide knife’s blade, then cut into chunks. Add a pinch of salt and stir well. Set aside for at least 10 mins to draw out the water.
- Meanwhile, put the minced garlic with white vinegar in a small bowl for 10 mins. It can help mellowing the garlic’s pungent flavour. Then mix with the remaining sauce ingredients.
- While waiting, roast the peanuts in a 180°C oven for 5 mins. For the sesame seeds, they need less time and easily get burnt, so roast them in a dry pan may let you have more control. Then set aside to cool down.
- Remove the excessive water from the cucumbers, combine with roasted peanuts, sesames and the sauce.
More Easy Salad Recipes
- Moroccan Mezze Recipe: Courgette and Egg Salad with Cumin
- Wakame Seaweed and Bean Sprouts Salad
- Quinoa Salad with Chickpeas (Easy and Refreshing!)
- Rosa Thai Mushroom Salad in Vegan Nam Tok Sauce
- Beet and Clementine Salad with Greek Yogurt Vinaigrette
- Portuguese Style Cod and Chickpea Salad
