Easy Cucumber Salad Recipe

This is one of the tastiest cucumber salad recipes I’ve made! It’s really easy to make with thinly sliced cucumbers, red onion, and a simple vinegar dressing.

When it comes to cucumber salad, I’m game for almost anything. I love crisp, cool cucumbers so much! This easy cucumber salad is one of my favorites with a mayo-free vinegar dressing. Thanks to the dressing, this salad tastes light and refreshing! If you are looking for a creamier dressing, I also love this creamy cucumber salad made with Greek yogurt or try my avocado salad with cucumbers.

If you like cucumber pickles, I bet you will love this cucumber salad. It’s fantastic next to richer dishes like pulled pork, smash burgers, and grilled steak since the vinegar in the dressing really cuts through the richness of the fat. I cannot wait for you to try it!

Key Ingredients

• Cucumbers: I love thin-skinned cucumbers like Hot House or Persian cucumbers. Garden cucumbers are fine, but they usually have thicker skins and seeds, so I peel them and scrape out most of their seeds before using them in this salad.
• Salt: The secret to the best cucumber salad is to salt your cucumbers. The salt makes the cucumbers taste better and removes excess water, diluting the dressing. I use sea salt, but any salt will do.
• Vinegar: I love apple cider vinegar in this dressing, but distilled or white wine vinegar also works nicely.
• Sugar: I don’t like sweet salad dressings, but I think a teaspoon (or two) of sugar balances the vinegar in this cucumber salad. I share a suggested amount in my recipe below so you can add it to your taste.
• Dijon mustard: Creamy Dijon adds a tangy flavor to this salad. I love it.
• Onion: Cucumber and onion are a classic combination, so I toss some sliced red onion into this salad. I like the red onion for color, but a sweet onion like Vidalia or Walla Walla onion would be amazing.

How to Make Cucumber Salad

The secret to this cucumber salad recipe is salting the cucumbers. Cucumbers are mostly water, so salting them draws out excess water before tossing them with the dressing. Salting the cucumbers makes the dressing tasty, not watered down. It also makes the cucumbers taste more like cucumbers. It intensifies their flavor.

The salting process takes about 30 minutes and is well worth it. I also salt cucumbers them when making dill pickles and salt cabbage when making this mayo-free coleslaw salad. I slice cucumbers into thin coins and toss the cucumber coins with salt, then let them sit in a colander to drain for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, I rinse the cucumbers with cold water to remove any excess salt so the salad will not be too salty. Finally, I squeeze them dry by adding them to a clean dishcloth and squeezing out as much liquid as possible.

Then, I toss the salted, rinsed, and squeezed cucumbers with the rest of our cucumber salad ingredients. You can enjoy the salad immediately, but it gets even better after an hour in the fridge.