Goes great as a side dish with things like air fried crumbed chicken, and it’s usually gone before I get the chance to try it with other things!
The vinegar is great for low GI-ing carby foods for me and thus reducing potential blood glucose spikes if I’ve made a mistake with carb amounts.
Cucumber Salad
Australian measurements: Tablespoon = 20ml; Teaspoon = 5ml
Weight to Volume Conversion Chart
Ingredients: Serves 3 to 4
1 Cucumber approx 200gm before peeling
1 Onion approx 100gm before peeling
1.5 tablespoons (24gm) raw sugar
¼ teaspoon Ground White Pepper
½ teaspoon Kosher or Sea Salt
3 tablespoons Vinegar (Malt, White, Apple Cider, Apple)
2 tablespoons Oil (not Olive)
Method:
The order of steps are important to gain the best flavour.
- In a non-metal, lidded container suitable for the fridge, make the Salad Dressing by combining Oil, Sugar, Pepper, Salt and Vinegar. Stir together and let sit.
- Finely chop Onion into teeny tiny dice, this is so it sticks to the cucumber slices, it can be thinly slivered and still work.
- Put diced Onion into Dressing and mix well. Putting the Onion in the Dressing first is important to allow the Onion and Vinegar to do their jobs. Optional: Marinate Onion in Dressing in fridge for an hour before adding the cucumber.
- Thinly slice Cucumber, add to Onion Dressing marinade and stir well.
- Keep refrigerated. Best to allow 3 to 4 hours to marinate, but not overnight as it loses it’s brightness if left that long.
About the ingredients:
These are my go to items, and it helps to see the sizes of the cucumber and onion, and it’s interesting to see pantry items from different countries!
Picky Picky Peanut Oil, any vege oil will work. I’ve said not Olive Oil, because it could overwhelm the brightness of the cucumber, but if you love the flavour of Olive oil, and the oil is fresh, it might work for you.
Apple Vinegar, The Ottogi Apple vinegar is my favourite to use for quick pickle sides like this, because it has a lovely light, bright uplifting flavour, but any light vinegar would work. Malt, White, Rice Wine, vinegars would also work well. This apple vinegar is not the same as an Apple Cider vinegar, although I expect that would work too. I often use Apple Cider Vinegar when making Chilli Chutney.
Salt, experience has shown me the value of using kosher salt as it does not have inclusions that are likely to affect the outcome, I don’t recommend using iodised as it can change the flavour negatively.
Ground White Pepper, this is a German style recipe and Black Pepper is too strong a flavour for it.
Raw Cane Sugar, or white, although brown sugar would shift the flavour toward heaviness, but coconut or palm might be nice if you like them.
Cucumber, Lebanese Cucumbers are my preferred because their seeds are soft and don’t tend to need removing for my health issues. Fresher is better of course. I check the flavour of the peel, and if it’s too hard due to water shortage when growing, or too old, I peel them, as the older skin doesn’t let the dressing infiltrate and marinate effectively.
Brown Onion, brown onions are my go to, and mostly all I can get that are useable without having to be cooked, lately. White would be just as good, not sure if red ones would work or not and they’d colour the dressing which could be interesting! I’ve said to dice them into teeny tiny dice, but slivers would work too if that’s your choice. The aim is to get the onion flavour infused into the dressing, and for the dressing to infuse into the onion, so smaller pieces allow for more flavour transfer.
