Spicy cucumber salad recipe

5 from 4 votes

This Spicy Cucumber Salad comes with a homemade Chinese chili garlic dressing. It’s easy to make, healthy, and made with simple ingredients!

Prep Time15

Total Time15

Course: Salad, Side Dish

Cuisine: Chinese

Keyword: Spicy cucumber salad, Spiral cucumber salad

Servings: servings

Trim the tip ends of the cucumber. Place one cucumber between two chopsticks that you don’t mind scuffing up. This prevents you from cutting through the cucumber. Make thin straight cuts on the top, about 2 mm slices. Flip the cucumber over (with the unsliced surface facing you), and make thin slices on a slight angle-cut.

In a large bowl, add the cucumbers and sprinkle with salt. Use your hands to gently toss and distribute it evenly. Set it aside to rest for 15 minutes.

In a small bowl, combine the ingredients from garlic to sugar. Stir and mix well.

Lightly rinse the salted cucumbers until tap water and gently pat them dry with a clean paper towel.

You can either cut the cucumber length in half or serve it whole. Transfer the cucumbers to a serving plate. Pour over the dressing and let it chill in the fridge for 10 minutes before serving.

Lightly rinse the cucumbers: The dressing does not have salt so you don’t want to rinse the salt completely off. A simple light rinse is all you need.
Make-ahead, storage: You can spiral cut, salt, rinse, and pat dry the cucumbers in advance. You can also make the marinade in advance. Store them separately and toss them to combine when you are ready to eat. The cucumbers will continue to produce excess moisture. You can discard the water before combining them with the dressing.
Save the excess liquid from leftovers! Rather than draining and dumping extra sauce from the cucumbers and the dressing, use it to pour over rice for added flavor.