Cucumber Salad Recipe for Crunchy Cucumbers on Creamy Butter Bean Purée

Our cucumber salad recipe makes a deliciously simple salad 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, it’s one of our best cucumber salad recipes.

We love our cucumber salads – this Burmese cucumber salad, Japanese cucumber cabbage salad, my radish cucumber salad and my baboushka’s cucumber sour cream salad – but this quick and easy cucumber salad recipe makes a favourite. It couldn’t be simpler, has loads of texture and flavour – it’s crunchy, creamy, fresh and herby, zesty and tangy – and a fantastic side to Mediterranean-style chicken, Middle Eastern seven-spiced meatballs and kofta kebabs.

Like my roasted cauliflower on hummus, this cucumber salad 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.

I’ll be making this easy cucumber salad this weekend, but before I share the recipe, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-funded. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting Grantourismo by making a donation to our Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon, which you can do for as little as the price of a coffee.

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Now let me tell you all about my easy cucumber salad recipe.

Cucumber Salad Recipe for Crunchy Cucumbers on Creamy Butter Beans

We really do enjoy our cucumber salads – from this cucumber and shredded chicken salad with carrot, daikon and chilli oil to this simple cucumber yoghurt salad, which is fantastic with falafel, fried kebbeh or grilled meats.

But since I created this cucumber salad recipe, it’s quickly become a favourite and one of our best cucumber salad recipes. Partly, because it’s true what they say, that there are few vegetables that keep you as cool as a cucumber. Cucumbers are a natural coolant due to their high water content, which keeps them so crunchy after being refrigerated.

Although while we treat cucumbers like vegetables, like a tomato, cucumbers are technically a fruit – because they grow from flowers and they have seeds in the centre – and, like a tomato, are just so fantastic in cooling salads.

While Kew Gardens’ Plants of the World website tells us that the most common cucumber species Cucumis sativus is native to China and northern Thailand, that should probably say China and Cambodia.

During research for my Cambodia culinary history, I found the cucumber (trasak) mentioned in ancient inscriptions dating to the early Khmer Empire, many centuries before the Thais had even made their way south from Southern China.

Terence asked me what cuisine to categorise it in for the recipe app. I’ve called my cucumber salad recipe ‘Australian’ as it’s partly inspired by that great Australian chef tradition of layering multiple textures, flavours and culinary inspirations onto a single plate.

It’s also partly inspired by those hummus-based dishes I love, as I said above, although I’ve not seen anything like cucumber salad in any of the Middle Eastern cuisines we cook and love from our years living in the Arabian Peninsula and cooking, eating and writing on Middle Eastern food and travel.

As usual, just a few tips to making this cucumber salad recipe, as it really is an easy dish to make and it very quickly comes together.

Tips to Making this Cucumber Salad Recipe

I only have a few tips to making this cucumber salad recipe, as it’s probably the easiest of all my cucumber salad recipes. It’s essentially a three-step process.

If you haven’t already made our easy vinaigrette recipe, and don’t have a jar in the fridge, make our super-simple take on the classic French salad dressing. It shouldn’t take more than five minutes.

Next, you make the butter bean puree by transferring the drained butter beans, chopped garlic cloves, sea salt, onion powder, and extra virgin olive oil to a blender and pulse until you have a fairly smooth consistency, although some gentle lumps are okay, as we love texture.

Spread the creamy butter bean puree onto a serving plate. I then tend to sprinkle some fresh dill on there, but I haven’t included that step in the recipe as not everyone is as mad about dill as I am.

Then, in a large bowl, you’ll toss the cucumbers spears in the vinaigrette so that they’re completely covered in the salad dressing, then at the last second, toss some roughly chopped fresh herbs in. Use whatever herbs you like and have on hand.

I used fresh dill the first time I tested this cucumber salad recipe, which gave it a distinctly Russian, Ukrainian cum Eastern European flavour, then the next time I tested it, I threw in a mix of fresh mint, coriander and dill, which gave it more of a Middle Eastern cum Mediterranean cum Australian flavour.

Don’t add the herbs until the last minute as they’ll go soggy, as you can see in the images – that’s what happens when you have to style dishes and shoot them for food blog. But unless you’re having a group of food blogger friends over who’ll want to take photos, you should be right.

Lastly, assemble the salad. I recommend using tongs to arrange the cucumber spears – and if they’re not sitting right, you could chop a few in half and place them at the centre of the plate, and that will help you create your pile of spears.

Finally, pour the rest of the vinaigrette over the cucumbers, drizzle a little extra virgin olive oil on too if you like, garnish with extra herbs, and serve immediately. This is a salad that won’t keep in the fridge. Make this the last dish you prep if you’re serving a few dishes for a meal.

Cucumber Salad Recipe for Crunchy Cucumbers on Creamy Butter Beans

Cucumber Salad Recipe for Crunchy Cucumbers on Creamy Butter Beans

AuthorLara Dunston

Our cucumber salad recipe makes a deliciously simple salad of crunchy cucumber spears that are tossed in an easy vinaigrette and fresh herbs, and piled onto a creamy butter bean purée. Full of texture and flavour, and quick to come together, it’s one of our best cucumber salad recipes.

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Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 0 minutes mins

Total Time 15 minutes mins

Course Salad

Cuisine Middle Eastern, Arabic, Lebanese

Servings made with recipeServings 4

Calories 626 kcal

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 210 g tin butter beans - drained and rinsed
• 2 cloves garlic - roughly chopped
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 300 g cucumbers - sliced into spears
• 2 tbsp vinaigrette – see recipe
• ½ cup fresh herbs - (dill, mint, coriander), roughly chopped

Instructions

 

• Make the butter bean puree by transferring the drained butter beans, chopped garlic cloves, sea salt, onion powder, and extra virgin olive oil to a blender and blend until you have a fairly smooth consistency.
• Spread the creamy butter bean puree onto a serving plate.
• In a large bowl, toss the cucumbers spears in the vinaigrette so that they’re completely covered in the salad dressing, then toss the fresh herbs in at the last minute just before serving.
• Use tongs to arrange the cucumber spears on the butter bean puree, then pour the rest of the vinaigrette over the cucumbers, garnish with extra herbs if you like, and serve immediately.

Nutrition

Calories: 626kcalCarbohydrates: 44gProtein: 14gFat: 46gSaturated Fat: 7gPolyunsaturated Fat: 11gMonounsaturated Fat: 26gSodium: 3092mgPotassium: 1093mgFiber: 14gSugar: 5gVitamin A: 2887IUVitamin C: 54mgCalcium: 150mgIron: 7mg

Please do let us know in the comments below if you make our easy cucumber salad recipe as we love hearing how our recipes turn out for you.