Cucumber Salad with Dill
This recipe is so simple it almost isn’t there, but it is enormously important to me. I think this may be the first thing I ever prepared.
Cucumber Salad with Dill
4 large “Persian” cucumbers, or about six or seven kirbies
Kosher salt
1 small onion
Apple cider vinegar
Dill (about 12 sprigs or 4 tablespoons snipped for this amount of cucumbers. Even if you have just a tiny bit of dill, it will be fine)
Sugar, possibly a little more salt.
Peel the cucumbers, or don’t, and slice them thin. Sprinkle kosher salt over them, toss to mix well and set aside for a few hours, even just fifteen minutes will work if you can’t wait.
Slice the onion very thin. Sprinkle with a tiny bit of salt and add about one teaspoon of sugar and two teaspoons of vinegar and set aside. I know you are thinking you will leave out the sugar, but please try just a tiny bit; it is very important.
When you are ready to assemble the salad, squeeze the juice out of the cucumbers—squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Snip the dill and add it to the cucumbers along with the onions in sugar and vinegar. Now add the reserved cucumber juice. Stir well and taste. You might need to add more sugar, salt, vinegar or water. The salad should taste not salty, sweet, or vinegary, but right exactly in the middle.
Traditionally, you would serve this with a great big pile of sour cream, but to me, it is even more interesting on its own.
More herbal memories at Weekend Herb Blogging.
posted by the chocolate doctor מרת שאקאלאד at 1:42 PM
7 Comments:
I think this sounds great, and since I have cucumbers and dill in my garden I think I better try it. I will even put in the sugar, since it's only 2 tsp., just to show I'm not stuck in my ways.
This looks great. I found a similar recipe in my Good Food Magazine with dill and chervil. Probably I'll try it next week.
Ha! this is pretty close to a salad that is one of the first things I ever made, too. I didn't know about the sugar, though, and will try it.
I generally use rice wine vinegar, rather than the apple cider kind. That is the only difference, except for the sugar. Rice wine vinegar is a bit sweet itself, though. so I will use the cider vinegar when I try the sugar.
I love recipes that are more than the sum of their simple parts. Have you ever cooked cucumbers? We used to make a recipe in my college household, from one of my roommates cookbooks for creamed cucumbers that was totally delicious. I don't remember the recipe, but may try to fine or reinvent it.
I can "taste" this in my mouth as I read it! I agree that people should not skip the sugar on something like this. I may fix this tomorrow, to go with our holiday meal.
I did it: This is "my" version of cucumber salad Delicious and healthy !
This really sounds interesting. I will try it soon.
Do you rinse the salt off the cucumbers? My mother made something like this last weekend with fresh garden cucumbers but said it was way too salty and she thought she should have rinsed the salt off before proceeding with the recipe.
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