Food and Cooking
All things culinary and cooking related. Share food! Share recipes! Share stuff about food, etc.
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¯\_(ツ)_/¯Korean spicy seasoned cucumber (oi muchim) is awesome with any meal with rice. Other than gochugaru (hot pepper flakes), every other ingredient you can get at a typical grocery store. I always have gochugaru on hand so I make this pretty regularly with lunch
Absolutely this. I make a slightly different version.
Halve a few cucumbers, chop into 1/2" pieces, I then crush line under a plate or bowl, not to pulp but just to break them up some. Salt and set aside for a few minutes to draw some moisture out. Drain, then add a tbsp or so of gochujang, a clove or so of garlic, tsp or so sesame oil, splash ponzu, 1 tsp sugar, and chili flakes to taste.
Honestly I've even just parsed it down to gochujang and sesame oil and it's great.
Excellent side dish to so many things.
I like them in salads, but when is harvesting season and I have lots of them I like to add them to pasta veggie mixes.
Usually I add them at the end of cooking to be lightly roasted but still crunchy.
Edit: roasted autoerection in action ;-)
So jealous of the amount of Raita you could be eating right now.
I would try to make biryani as my raita delivery vehicle.
Yes OP look up a recipe for raita and go for it. Maximum flavour from minimum ingredients. The spice i love in my raita is roasted and crushed cumin.
Make pickles. It's easy to make refrigerator pickles you just need some vinegar and spices. It works the best if their pickling cucumbers but the regular ones work alright. The flavor is the but the texture is a little off
Get some French onion or ranch dip and cut them into slices for eating. Another possible option is to dehydrate them into cucumber chips.
They’re excellent for dipping in hummus. That’s actually what I’m eating right now as I type this.
Cucumber is good for meatless sandwiches. The classic English tea sandwich is cucumber and cream cheese. I like cucumber, hummus, onion, and tomato on seeded whole wheat. It gives a sandwich that relies on a spread for it's primary filling flavor some thickness and crunch.
Cacik! It's a Turkish chilled soup with yogurt, cucumber, mint, garlic, etc. Very refreshing in hot weather.
Greek salad with diced cucumber, tomato, onion, olives, and feta with a vinaigrette is delicious. Also, cucumber and onion salad is just cucumbers, onions, white vinegar, water, salt, pepper, and a little sugar is delicious. I can't remember the measurements but it should be very easy to find online.
Never encountered finadene, thanks so much for sharing! Looking forward to trying :)
It's a fantastically versatile sauce. You can marinate chicken or dip cooked beef in it for flavor. Or pour it over rice with fish.
Chinese style smashed cucumber salad with chilli and sesame oil
I should eat them more, but I have an irrational fear that they'll go moldy before I even cut them. Mostly only use them in tzatziki and sushi, but they're good in a salad, sandwich, anything requiring a refreshing component.
We've had a huge crop of Armenian cucumbers, this year. They just won't stop. Been juicing them by the gallon, to just drink. And, marinating them in mirin/rice vinegar/sesame oil w garlic for simple salads with just chopped tomatoes stirred in.
So it's not exactly sophisticated but cucumber water. I love it, every time I go somewhere that has cucumber water I always think I'm somewhere posh (even though it costs pennies).
Panzanella comes immediately to mind, as does gazpacho and Thai stuffed cucumber soup.
Sunomomo. Typically prepared with Japanese cucumber, but it works fine with other types too. Recipe:
- 4 cucumbers or so
- ½ Tbsp salt
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 2 Tbsp water
- 3 Tbsp rice vinegar or white wine vinegar
- 1 tsp roasted sesame seeds
- Slice the cucumbers, really thin. It's fine to use a knife, but do it preferably with a mandolino.
- Sprinkle salt over the slices. Make sure that it's spread evenly. Wait 15min or so. Drain the water.
- In the meantime mix the sugar, water, and vinegar. Add it to the cucumber and sprinkle the sesame seeds. Let it chill a bit and serve.
Some people also add soy sauce, or MSG.
As a garnish in a gin and tonic
Pickle em!
My daughter loves to cut cucumbers (Persian/English ones with limited seeds and a pretty solid core) into little serving vessels.
She gets a 5cm/2inch diameter cuke, chops it into 4cm/1.5inch cylinders, uses a melon baller to scoop out most of the middle - making a kind of cucumber-based cup, then she fills it up with whatever she's fashioned out of available ingredients.
She's done guacamole, egg salad, some kind of bizarre ham and soy sauce and carrot thing, a Philadelphia-cream-cheese-based mix, leftover fried-rice. Basically, whatever you can ram into a cucumber goes!
If you want a fun way to plate different taste sensations it's an attractive presentation option! It also serves to "revitalise" leftovers, providing an alternative serving platform to keep finicky-eaters engaged. It also also means you don't need a knife/fork and maybe not even another plate apart from the serving one, so saves you some washing up 🙂
En Guete!
I personally like them on sandwiches or wraps. They add a nice texture and they taste good. I'll often replace pickles with them, since they are the same thing, just one is pickled.