Our best cucumber recipes include cucumber dips to serve with snacks or as appetisers, such as Greek tzatziki, which is great for dipping pita into, and Indian raita, a lovely cooling accompaniment to spicy curries. We’ve got cucumber sides, such as Middle Eastern style cucumber spears piled onto butter bean purée or hummus, and cucumber salads that can be eaten on their own, such as our rucola, radish and cucumber salad with green beans, peas and crumbly feta, which is fantastic with roast chicken and grilled meats.
If you’re like me and can munch into crunchy cucumbers year-round, then you’ll love these cucumber recipes. While cucumbers are obviously brilliant in summer, when refrigerated and their high water content keeps them crispy and cooling, they also make perfect sides to comforting stews and warming curries in winter.
Our best cucumber recipes will make you cucumber dips and mezze, such as Greek tzatziki and Indian raita, cucumber sides and salads, like this easy Korean cucumber salad that is perfect with fiery Korean fried chicken, and this zingy Burmese cucumber salad that has a dressing of fruit vinegar and sesame oil, and is sprinkled with crispy fried shallots, and made for serving with a rich oily Burmese curry.
We also have recipes for cucumbers salads that we happily eat on their own, such as this shredded chicken salad with cucumber, carrot, daikon, and sesame chilli oil, and this radish cucumber salad with peppery rucola, crumbly feta and fresh herbs. Both cucumber recipes make deliciously filling salads that are perfect for a casual lunch or dinner.
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Best Cucumber Recipes from Cucumber Dips, Starters, Sides, Salads and Even Soup
These are our best cucumber recipes for cucumber salads and cucumber sides from everywhere from Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean.
Cucumber Dips, Pickles and Starters
These cucumber recipes make cucumber pickles, a cucumber relish, and cucumber dips and they’re some of my favourite homemade dips. Typically served as appetisers, such as Mediterranean mezze and mezedes, or, like Indian raita, as cooling accompaniments to spicy dishes, these cucumber dips can also be served as a snack on their own with toasted sourdough, homemade croutons or crispy pita chips.
Russian Dill Pickles Recipe for Homemade Gherkins Like My Grandparents Made
One of our best cucumber recipes and one of our best pickles recipes, my Russian dill pickles recipe makes homemade gherkins or pickled cucumbers just like my Russian-Ukrainian grandparents used to make. While my papa and baboushka used the more traditional water bath canning method of pickling, this recipe is for easy refrigerator pickles. Faster to prepare, they taste super delicious, but won’t last nearly as long and must be kept in the fridge.
Baboushka would serve dishes of dill pickles with every meal, and for Sunday family feasts whole jars of the things would go on the dining table, alongside baba’s pink beetroot potato salad; crock pots full of hot boiled Russian dumplings, pelmeni and vareniki, coated in melted butter; the savoury mince filled hand-pies called piroshki, kept warm under tea-towels; baked stuffed cabbage rolls, swimming in a rich tomato sauce; and juicy Russian kotleti.
I do the same. I also include finely-diced dill pickles in my Russian devilled eggs and potato salad, also known as the Olivier salad or ensalada Rusa and sprinkle them on blini with smoked salmon, sour cream and dill and buckwheat kasha with soft-boiled eggs, bacon, mushrooms, and caramelised onions. There’s a layer of pickled cucumbers in my mini mimosa salads and they feature in my hearty traditional Russian beef stew and Russian barley and pickle soup.
Russian Dill Pickles Recipe for Homemade Gherkins Like My Russian Grandparents Made
Ajat Dtaeng Gwa Thai Cucumber Relish Recipe to Go With Thai Curries
This ajat dtaeng gwa Thai cucumber relish recipe will make you the perfect companion to geng gari gai, an aromatic chicken curry recipe from Thailand. The cucumber side is piquant, cooling and refreshing, making it ideal for any spicy Thai curries, so don’t feel you need it limit to geng gari gai.
Thai chefs typically translate this as a relish, although it won’t make the chutney or pickles-style of relish you might think of as a relish. Rather it’s an accompaniment that’s all at once refreshing and cooling, a little hot from the mild chilli, and sweet and sour.
Ajat Dtaeng Gwa Thai Cucumber Relish Recipe to Go With Thai Curries
Tzatziki Recipe for an Easy Authentic Greek Yoghurt Cucumber Dip
One of my favourite cucumber recipes, this easy tzatziki recipe makes an authentic creamy Greek yoghurt cucumber dip that has cousins in other Mediterranean cuisines, from Turkish cuisine to the cuisines of the Levant of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine, and Indian cuisine.
Super easy to make, tzatziki is also very versatile. Traditionally served as a meze and eaten as a dip with pita, tzatziki is also served as a side and sauce with souvlaki (skewers) and keftedes (meatballs). Dip pita into tzatziki, just as Arabic flatbreads are used to scoop up khyar bi laban in the Middle East.
Tzatziki Recipe for an Easy Authentic Greek Yoghurt Cucumber Dip
Creamy Cucumber Sour Cream Salad Recipe with Shallots and Dill
My easy cucumber sour cream salad recipe will make you one of my family recipes, a creamy cucumber salad with shallots, lemon, vinegar, pickles, sour cream, and fresh dill. My Russian-Ukrainian grandmother served this sour cream cucumber salad more as an appetiser than a main salad, as part of a spread of zakuski that was served when everyone sat down to the table.
Small plates of gherkins, radishes, smoked salmon, rollmops (pickled herrings), salamis, cured meats, hard cheeses, black rye bread, buckwheat pancakes called blini, boiled eggs with caviar or devilled eggs, the Russian ‘eggplant caviar’ called ikra, and baskets of piroshki, minced meat-filled pastries – all washed down with vodka, of course.
Big bowls of salads, such as a Russian garden salad, pink beetroot potato salad and Olivier salad were taken to the table just before the warm mains were served. There’d be golubtsy, cabbage rolls stuffed with a savoury filling; kotleti, delicious deep-fried chicken meat patties; and casserole pots brimming with pelmeni and vareniki, boiled dumplings.
Creamy Cucumber Sour Cream Salad Recipe with Shallots and Dill
Khyar bi Laban Recipe for a Cooling Middle Eastern Side Dish
One of our best Middle Eastern recipes, and another of my favourite cucumber recipes, this cucumber yoghurt salad recipe makes a cooling Middle Eastern dip or side dish called khyar bi laban that is typically served with grilled meats such as kebabs and kofta.
You can serve this cucumber salad as a mezze or dip like Greek tzatziki, alongside other Middle Eastern dips such as hummus and baba ghanoush, and salads such as fattoush and tabbouleh.
The salad is also thinned out when it’s referred to as a cucumber yoghurt sauce when it’s given a lighter consistency than a dip, and is served like an Indian raita when this cucumber yoghurt salad called khyar bi laban.
Cucumber Yoghurt Salad Recipe for a Cooling Middle Eastern Side Dish
Authentic Easy Indian Raita Recipe for a Cooling Accompaniment to Curries
Another of our best cucumber recipes, this easy Indian raita recipe makes a deliciously refreshing yogurt based dip or side of diced cucumber, tomato and red onion with fresh fragrant mint and coriander.
It’s a cooling accompaniment to any spiced dish, from curries to biryanis, and can be eaten with pickles, relishes, flat breads or papadams. It’s also a perfect side to this Punjabi chole or chickpea curry and tamarind eggplant.
Authentic Easy Indian Raita Recipe for a Cooling Curry Accompaniment
Cucumber Side Dishes
I think of these cucumber dishes more as cucumber sides, in that you probably wouldn’t serve these on their own. Or maybe you would. But I love these with kebabs, meatballs, grilled meats and so on.
Classic Korean Cucumber Salad Recipe for the Refreshing Korean Side Dish
Another of our best cucumber recipes, this classic Korean cucumber salad recipe makes a light refreshing cucumber side dish to serve with spicy Korean fried chicken, Korean meatballs, and stir-fried ramen, or any salty, fried Korean drinking food or anju.
Or let the salad sit for longer and serve a smaller portion of a softer cucumber salad as an array of Korean salad starters or banchan before Korean barbecue. We love to eat it with Korean corn cheese, Korean potato salad, and Korean cabbage salad.
I also enjoy eating this cucumber salad as a cooling side for Korean spicy udon noodles, Korean japchae (glass noodles), bokkeumbap (kimchi fried rice), Terence’s jazzed-up Korean ramen noodle bowl with sliced pork, boiled eggs, Asian greens, and my Korean spicy ramen noodles and meatballs, which featured this cucumber salad on the side.
Classic Korean Cucumber Salad Recipe for the Refreshing Korean Side Dish
Cucumber Salad Recipe for Crunchy Cucumbers on Creamy Butter Bean Purée
This Middle Eastern style cucumber salad recipe makes a deliciously simple side dish of crunchy cucumber spears that are tossed in our easy vinaigrette and fresh herbs, and piled onto a creamy butter bean purée. Full of texture and flavour, and quick to come together.
Another of our best cucumber recipes, it couldn’t be simpler and has loads of texture and flavour – it’s crunchy, creamy, fresh and herby, zesty and tangy – and a fantastic cucumber side to Mediterranean-style chicken, seven-spiced meatballs and kofta kebabs.
Like my roasted cauliflower on hummus, this cucumber side is inspired by Middle Eastern recipes we love, such as the wonderful hummus-based dishes like balela salad (village salad on hummus and chickpeas) and hummus bil lahme (spiced minced beef on hummus), and Turkish specialties such as Antalya piyaz, a salad of tomatoes and boiled eggs piled on a white bean purée similar to this butter bean dip.
Cucumber Salad Recipe for Crunchy Cucumbers on Creamy Butter Bean Purée
Creamy Whipped Feta and Cucumber Salad Recipe with Crunchy Dukkah
One of my all-time favourite cucumber recipes, our recipe for whipped feta and cucumber salad with dukkah, the Middle Eastern nut, seed and spice condiment, makes a fantastic cucumber side, or snack or appetiser, that you can make in ten minutes or less.
After whipping the feta with finely chopped fresh dill and seasoning, you generously spread it onto a serving plate, sprinkle it with herbs, arrange the cucumber slices on top, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, shower with dukkah and herbs, and you’re done.
And it’s nothing if not versatile. You could add some tomato slices to the mix, and juicy Kalamata olives, or pile on a Cypriot salad or Greek salad (minus the feta), or a farmer’s salad, as Lebanese cooks do with a hummus balela salad or as the Turkish do with Antalya-style piyaz, piling salad on white beans. You could also skip the whipped feta and just spread some goat’s cheese on a serving plate.
Creamy Whipped Feta and Cucumber Salad Recipe with Crunchy Dukkah
Cucumber Salads
Many of our best cucumber recipes are cucumber salads, and we’ve got everything from a Burmese cucumber salad with sesame seeds and green chillies to a Japanese style cabbage and cucumber salad. Of course salads can also be served as starters and sides, but these are salads that I could happily eat on their own.
Burmese Cucumber Salad Recipe with Sesame Seeds, Green Chillies and Crispy Fried Shallots
Another one of my favourite cucumber recipes, this Burmese cucumber salad recipe makes a crunchy cucumber salad with sesame seeds, green chillies, purple shallots and crispy fried shallots with a dressing of fruit vinegar and sesame oil. It’s based on cucumber salad recipes from Myanmar I’ve adapted from my favourite Burmese cookbook, the charming vintage cookbook, Cook and Entertain the Burmese Way (1978) by Mi Mi Khaing.
This Burmese cucumber salad makes the perfect accompaniment to this Indian-style Burmese curry and our classic Burmese chicken curry. They’re two of our favourite chicken curry recipes and probably some of our favourite chicken recipes full stop. It’s also fab with this Burmese egg curry.
We eat the lot with Burmese coconut rice and other salads from Myanmar that are made to be served with rich oily curries, such as this Burmese raw cabbage salad, our Shan tomato salad recipe or this Shan vermicelli noodle salad.
Burmese Cucumber Salad Recipe with Sesame, Green Chillies, Crispy Shallots
Fattoush Salad Recipe for a Traditional Lebanese Village Salad
This classic fattoush salad recipe makes a traditional Lebanese village salad of ripe tomatoes, crunchy cucumbers, zingy radishes, and fresh fragrant herbs, tossed in a delightful salad dressing distinguished by the beloved Middle Eastern ingredients of pomegranate seeds and ground sumac, and textured with crispy pita chips.
I’ve included instructions for plain homemade pita chips in the recipe below. You don’t need to season the pita chips as you have loads of flavour in the fattoush salad dressing. But if you want to season your pita crisps, see this more detailed homemade pita chips recipe.
I could gladly eat a big bowl of fattoush by itself, but like a traditional farmers salad, fattoush is typically served with Middle Eastern mezze and grilled meats, which makes it perfect for grilling season and summertime barbecues. See our recipes for beef kofta, hummus and baba ganoush, and our summer salad recipes here.
Fattoush Salad Recipe for a Traditional Lebanese Village Salad
Japanese Style Cabbage and Cucumber Salad with Sesame Seeds
This Japanese style cabbage and cucumber salad recipe is made with quintessential Japanese ingredients such as sesame seeds and roasted seaweed, which give it a fantastic texture, while the dressing of rice vinegar, Japanese soy sauce, sesame oil, and grated ginger give it a delightful tartness.
The salad is a breeze to make and can be made within ten minutes. Although let it sit longer and it tastes even better as the cabbage softens and the flavours meld together. When the texture is to your liking, transfer the salad to a pretty Japanese bowl, sprinkle some more sesame seeds on top, and serve.
One of our best cucumber recipes, this cucumber salad is the perfect side to Japanese comfort food dishes such as Japanese fried chicken, pork tonkatsu and katsu burgers. As is this Japanese potato salad recipe.
Japanese Style Cabbage and Cucumber Salad Recipe with Sesame Seeds
Shredded Chicken Salad Recipe with Cucumber, Carrot, Daikon, and Sesame Chilli Oil
This shredded chicken salad recipe with cucumber, carrot, daikon, and sesame chilli oil makes a deliciously light yet filling salad that’s perfect for a casual lunch or dinner, and it’s another of our best cucumber recipes.
Created to use leftovers of a carrot and daikon slaw, we added shredded poached chicken, crunchy diced cucumbers, sesame chilli oil dressing, and a sprinkle of sesame seeds and fresh coriander.
One of our most popular chicken breast recipes, which are the most searched-for chicken recipes on our site, if you’ve made our poached chicken breast recipes and shredded chicken salad recipes, such as our Vietnamese chicken salad recipe, our Lao shredded chicken salad recipe, and our bang bang chicken salad recipe, you’re going to love this chicken salad, packed with crunchy cucumbers.
Shredded Chicken Salad Recipe with Cucumber, Carrot, Daikon, and Sesame Chilli Oil
Radish Cucumber Salad Recipe with Salty Feta, Peppery Rucola and Fresh Herbs
Our radish cucumber salad recipe makes a healthy salad that’s packed with flavour and texture and it’s one of my favourite cucumber recipes. The radish, cucumber and green beans provide plenty of crunch, the green peas give sweetness, the crumbly feta lends saltiness and creaminess, while the rucola adds peppery notes, and the herbs fragrance and fresh flavours.
It’s the kind of salad that can serve as a substantial accompaniment to a roast chicken for a comfort food meal or in smaller portions alongside, say, a piece of crispy grilled salmon or even a great hunk of steak to add freshness as much as colour to protein-forward dishes.
We usually divide the salad of the size you see in the image below between two big bowls and it’s plenty for lunch on its own. For dinner, we enjoy the salad with braised chicken with olives and capers, and Hassleback potatoes on the side, and we’re very satisfied.
Radish Cucumber Salad Recipe with Salty Feta, Peppery Rucola and Fresh Herbs
Cambodian Cucumber Salad Recipe for Nhoam Trasak
Our Cambodian cucumber salad recipe for nhoam trasak makes a fantastic filling salad that you can eat year-round. Traditionally shared in Cambodia, where, like most salads, it’s place at the centre of a table and eaten family-style with rice and an array of other dishes, you can easily serve this as a satisfying single-bowl meal for lunch or dinner.
This is a fantastic year-round salad if you’re lucky to live in warmer climates, such as Southeast Asia, or a colossal country like Australia where you can source cucumbers from one state or another throughout the year.
The addition of fried bacon, smoked dried fish and dried shrimp make this Cambodian cucumber salad filling and a great year-round salad for me, in the same way that I can tuck into a salade Niçoise or Caesar salad mid-winter, especially if Terence adds a salmon fillet to the former and fried chicken to the latter!
When you’re using dried shrimp, always soak it a little first, then when you’re ready to combine your salad, dry it off thoroughly, and pound it in your mortar and pestle. If you’ve not used a mortar and pestle before, we have a few tips.
Cambodian Cucumber Salad Recipe for Nhoam Trasak, a Fantastic Year Round Salad
Lara’s Grandmother’s Classic Russian Garden Salad Recipe
This classic Russian garden salad recipe makes the Russian take on the simple tossed green salad with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and onion. The addition of fresh dill and pink radishes add fragrance and crunch, setting it apart from other European garden salads.
My recipe makes the simple green salad that my baboushka served with every family meal when I was growing up in Sydney in the Seventies. As simple as the salad sounds, it was the perfect companion to heartier dishes she served, such as Russian cabbage rolls, borscht, beetroot and potato salad, and vareniki and pelmeni (Russian dumplings).
Use the best quality produce you can source. My baba’s garden salad was exceptional, because most of the ingredients were just picked from papa’s vegetable garden. Baba and papa had a market garden in Seven Hills when they were younger, and papa grew vegetables in their backyard at Blacktown. Papa’s tomatoes were the sweetest I’ve ever tasted, his radishes the zestiest, and his cucumbers the crunchiest.
This Classic Russian Garden Salad Goes on the Table for Every Russian Meal
Cabbage Salad with Apples, Cucumber, Radish and Creamy Poppy Seed Dressing
Our recipe for a cabbage salad with apples, cucumber, radish and creamy poppy seed dressing makes a crunchy Russian salad popularised in the diaspora in Australia thanks to an iconic Soviet-era cookbook. This salad comes in infinite variations giving you the freedom to get creative: add celery, replace apples with pears, and the creamy dressing with mustard vinaigrette.
You’ll love this recipe for a cabbage salad with apples, cucumber, radish and creamy poppy seed dressing if you’re a fan of cucumber salads, cabbage salads and coleslaws, if you’re fond of fruit in vegetable-driven salads, and you like salads with creamy dressings, such as this Russian cucumber sour cream salad.
What I love about this salad is that it’s essentially crunchy and creamy, but you can get creative with whatever you have on hand. Add even more crunch with nuts, such as walnuts or pecans. Purple cabbage is pretty but use white cabbage if that’s what’s in the fridge. Celery adds freshness. Grapes are a great addition for another texture.
This is a brilliant year-round salad and while I’m happy to munch on a bowl of this for lunch, when I’ll often add shredded poached chicken, it makes a fantastic side salad. My family served it alongside a Russian garden salad and beetroot potato salad, with chicken cutlets, such as kotleti and chicken Kiev. It’s also fantastic with barbecued meats, meatballs, roast chicken, or fried chicken.
Cabbage Salad with Apples, Cucumber, Radish and Creamy Poppy Seed Dressing
Cold Soup Recipes with Cucumber
These chilled summer soup recipes include cucumber, which is one of the reasons they’re so cooling in summer.
Traditional Andalusian Style Gazpacho from Southern Spain
This is the best gazpacho recipe for a traditional Andalusian style gazpacho from southern Spain of the kind that you’ll find in cities such as Seville and it’s another of our best cucumber recipes. This recipe results in a vibrant orange gazpacho that tastes even better the next day.
Gazpacho has a long history dating to the Ancient Greek and Roman Empires, when it’s said that soldiers carried stale bread, garlic and olive oil on expeditions, where they used a mortar and pestle to prepare a paste, from which they made a soup.
The term ‘gazpacho’ is thought to have derived from the Arabic word for ‘soaked bread’, which makes sense, although some Spanish cookbooks sometimes categorise gazpacho as a salad. If you’re wondering why this gazpacho isn’t more red-coloured, that’s the more tomato-driven, northern-style gazpacho.
I’ve seen a dizzying array of ingredients being added to gazpacho recipes that really didn’t need adjusting in the first place, particularly centuries-old gazpacho recipes such as this one that have stood the test of time.
Best Gazpacho Recipe for an Authentic Andalusian Style Gazpacho from Southern Spain
Russian Okroshka Soup Recipe
Russians love their soups and there are soups for every season and occasion. You probably know borscht, the hearty beetroot-based vegetable and meat broth that’s one of Russia’s best-known soups, although its provenance is in Ukraine. But you might not have heard of this Russian okroshka soup made with kefir (Окрошка с кефиром).
Seasonal vegetables such as cucumber and radish can be substituted with whatever’s available that is crisp and crunchy. With a base of fermented kefir it’s also one of the healthiest soups you’ll make, not to mention one of the easiest, coming together in half an hour.
There are countless recipes for okroshka. If they’re not made with kefir, they’re prepared with kvass or sour cream, however, they all share some key ingredients and that’s potato, cucumber and radish, and maybe boiled eggs. Fresh fragrant dill is essential. Scallions and mint make this soup for me. Serve with some savoury pirozhki (hand pies) or my petite stuffed cabbage rolls.
Russian Okroshka Soup Recipe for a Cold Summer Soup You Can Slurp All Year
Cambodian Outside of the Pot Soup Recipe
This Cambodian outside of the pot soup recipe makes chrouk krao chhnang in Khmer, another of our best recipes with cucumber. Typically eaten cool or at room temperature, it’s made for the hot Northern Southeast Asian summer, when the region experiences some of its highest temperatures.
Super easy to pull together, it’s made by preparing the ingredients, placing them in bowls, then pouring hot water into the bowls, allowing the soup to cool, then adding seasoning and fresh aromatic herbs.
It’s a very versatile soup and is perhaps one of the most reinterpreted, deconstructed and reconstructed of all Cambodian dishes that (pre-pandemic) you’d find on gourmet tasting menus at Siem Reap’s finest Cambodian restaurants, such as chef Sothea Seng’s Lum Orng Farm to Table restaurant, the Kimsan ‘twins’ restaurant Embassy, and Joannès Rivière’s Cuisine Wat Damnak.
Expect to be served anything from a full-flavoured soup featuring fillets of fresh local fish instead of small torn pieces of smoked dried fish to a delicate mound of julienned cucumbers topped with crispy fried fish, sprinkled with edible flowers, and the clearest of consommés poured by the waiter at the table.
Cambodian Outside of the Pot Soup Recipe for Chrouk Krao Chhnang
Please do leave any feedback, tips or tweaks in the comments below if you make any of our cucumber recipes as we love to hear how they turn out for you.
