For Better Salads, Lose the Water
For a cucumber salad with deeper flavor and better texture, salt then squeeze
Heat your dressing—the cucumbers better soak up the spicy, savory flavors.
The trouble with cucumber salads often is the cucumbers themselves. Once cut, they release water that soaks the other ingredients, dilutes the dressing and makes it difficult for seasonings to stick. This means that a good cucumber salad starts with moisture control—and a different approach to dressings.
Our testing found that simply slicing cucumbers was a nonstarter; they shed too much liquid. We often salt and drain cut vegetables to help them release moisture, but even this wasn’t quite enough. With cucumbers—which contain more water than most other vegetables—we also found it necessary to gently squeeze them to express even more liquid.
With the moisture under control, we focused on the dressing, taking inspiration from kakdi chi koshimbir, a cucumber salad from Maharashtra, India. The dish is loaded with flavor and pops of texture from peanuts, sizzled cumin seeds and chilies.
The peanuts—which add richness as well as crunch—didn’t work when simply chopped; the large pieces wouldn’t stick to the cucumbers. We tried pulverizing them in the food processor, but that reduced them to nearly a paste that was too thick to coat. The solution meant going back to basics—a mortar and pestle. Crushing peanuts this way created a mix of clingy fine bits and coarser, crunchier chunks, the combination of which adhered well to the cucumbers.
If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, we found you can approximate the texture by crushing the peanuts with the bottom of a heavy skillet or rolling pin. Just put the peanuts in a zip-close plastic bag first, then press or roll over them.
Instead of a vinaigrette, this cucumber salad relies on a tarka, which blooms spices (in this case, mustard and cumin seeds) in hot oil or ghee. This lightly toasts the whole spices and draws out their flavors. The hot dressing is poured over the cucumbers, which soak up the spicy, savory flavors as the mixture cools.
To complete the dish, we add lemon juice, cilantro and fresh chilies (we like serrano or Fresno). The acidity of the citrus cuts through the richness of the nuts and the tarka, balancing the spices and tying the salad together.
Shaula Clark
Shaula Clark is a Boston-based writer and editor. Her six-year stint as managing editor of Milk Street’s magazine absolutely leveled up her cooking game—though her trusty canine sous chef, Roxie the Schipperke, remains unimpressed unless cheese is involved. In the kitchen, she likes to get weird, with experiments yielding both great success (absinthe sorbet) and dismal failure (liquid smoke-infused rice paper “bacon”). Thanks to a terrifyingly productive tomato garden, Milk Street’s salmorejo—a luscious Andalusian tomato soup—has become a particular favorite recipe. She is, for the record, also staunchly pro-ketchup. Disagreements over her stance on condiments may be sent to .
