Creamy Cucumber Sour Cream Salad Recipe with Shallots and Dill

My cucumber sour cream salad recipe makes a creamy cucumber salad that has crunch from the cucumbers and shallots, zing from lemon and vinegar, tang from pickles and sour cream, and fragrance from fresh dill. The Eastern European style salad makes a fantastic addition to a zakuski table or delicious side dish for roast chicken, rissoles or cabbage rolls.

As you’ve probably guessed from all our cucumber salad recipes – from this salad of crunchy cucumber spears tossed in our easy vinaigrette piled onto a creamy butter bean purée to this Burmese cucumber salad, Japanese cucumber cabbage salad and radish cucumber salad – we eat a lot of cucumbers here in Cambodia.

We love our cucumber salads, but despite me calling this a cucumber sour cream salad recipe, it actually makes an Eastern European style cucumber side dish, that’s more akin to, say, Indian raita, the cooling accompaniment to spicy Indian curries, such as this Punjabi chole or chickpea curry or Indian-style Burmese curry. However you serve it, it’s one of our best cucumber recipes.

My Russian-Ukrainian grandmother presented her cucumber sour cream salad as an appetiser or zakuski, an array of small dishes that served as starters, which would then stay on the table to be eaten with mains, in the same way this Middle Eastern style cucumber yoghurt salad is served with kofta kebabs, baharat meatballs, falafel, and fried kebbeh.

Now before I tell you more about this cucumber sour cream salad recipe, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-supported. If you’ve cooked our recipes, please consider supporting Grantourismo by using our links to buy a handcrafted KROK, the best mortar and pestle ever or buy something on Amazon, such as these cookbooks for culinary travellers or classic cookbooks for serious cooks. Now let me tell you more about this cucumber sour cream salad recipe.

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 salad, as part of a spread of zakuski that was served when everyone sat down to the table.

Zakuski date back to Imperial Russia and were elaborate spreads of hors d’oeuvres laid out on buffet tables overflowing with silver trays of nibbles, snacks and small plates. Guests would enjoy some bites standing as they sipped champagne, before entering the Tsar’s opulent dining room for an extravagant sit-down banquet.

My baboushka’s family meals were much simpler affairs, although still extravagant. The dining table heaved with zakuski, which would be served when everyone sat down to the table to nibble, talk and drink.

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 of minced pork, beef, carrot, and rice, cloaked in a rich homemade tomato sauce; kotleti, delicious deep-fried chicken meat patties; and casserole pots brimming with pelmeni, boiled dumplings stuffed with savoury pork and beef mince, and vareniki, dumplings stuffed with rustic mashed potato and caramelised onion. It was hearty home-cooked comfort food at its best.

What has long fascinated me is how many fermented milk and dill salads, cold soups, sauces, and dips there are. This cucumber sour cream salad has a cousin called mizeria in Poland – which shouldn’t be surprising with their shared borders and intertwined histories dating back to 9th century Kievan Rus, now modern-day Ukraine, Belarus and Western Russia.

Russia also has okroshka, a cold kavr- or kefir-based soup made with cucumber, radish and dill, which in Caucasus is called ovdukh. There’s a yoghurt-based sauce called tarator in the Balkans and Middle East, which is talattouri in Cyprus, which has a cousin in Greece called tzatziki, made with yogurt and cucumber.

In Turkey, there is cacik in Turkish, pronounced as jajeek, which is also the name of a similar dish in Iraq, while in nearby Iran, there’s ash-e doogh, although it has a much greater variety of herbs, as well as black pepper, raisins and nuts.

In the north, Sweden has dillsås, a sour cream dill sauce called gräddfil, or sour cream, while in Iceland, there’s skyronnes prepared with skyr, a traditional Icelandic yogurt, and in Finland, there’s tillikastike, made with kermaviili, a Finnish curd cream.

I only have a few tips to making this cucumber salad recipe, as it’s quick and easy and comes together quickly.

Tips to Making This Cucumber Sour Cream Salad Recipe with Shallots and Dill

I only have a few tips to making this cucumber sour cream salad recipe, as it couldn’t be easier. The most important thing that you need to know is that unlike a potato salad, this salad does not keep well, so don’t start making it more than 30 minutes before you’re about to serve it.

The first thing you need to do is transfer the sliced cucumber rounds, chopped purple shallots, and diced gherkins (dill pickles) to a salad bowl, then, in a smaller bowl, stir the sour cream, juice of half a lemon, white vinegar, salt, white pepper, and fresh dill together to create the creamy dressing.

Make sure to taste the dressing and adjust the seasoning to suit your palate, but do note that the flavours will meld together when you refrigerate them, so don’t worry too much about perfecting the dressing just yet.

Next, you’ll pour the creamy sour cream dressing over the cucumber, shallots and gherkins. Use a large spoon or spatula to combine everything well so that it’s all coated with the dressing.

At this point I recommend refrigerating the cucumber sour cream salad for 15-20 minutes or so to chill the salad and allow the flavours to meld. Don’t leave it in the fridge longer than 30 minutes as it will start to get too wet.

Just before you serve our cucumber sour cream salad, you’ll need to stir it well as water has probably already gathered on the surface and bottom of the salad bowl.

Try the salad again and adjust the seasoning again if you wish, then transfer the salad to a serving bowl, sprinkle some more fresh sprigs of dill on top and serve it immediately with other zakuski as suggested, above, or alongside kotleti or golubtsy or even pelmeni. Enjoy!

Cucumber Sour Cream Salad Recipe with Shallots and Dill

Cucumber Sour Cream Salad Recipe with Shallots and Dill

AuthorLara Dunston

This cucumber sour cream salad recipe makes a creamy cucumber salad that has crunch from the cucumbers and shallots, zing from lemon and vinegar, tang from pickles and sour cream, and fragrance from fresh dill. The Eastern European style salad makes a fantastic addition to the zakuski table or delicious side dish for roast chicken, rissoles or cabbage rolls.

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 10 minutes mins

Total Time 20 minutes mins

Course Salad, Side Dish

Cuisine Russian, Polish, Eastern European

Servings made with recipeServings 4 people

Calories 187 kcal

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 3 small cucumbers - sliced in rounds
• 1 small purple shallot - chopped into small pieces
• 2 small gherkins - (dill pickles), finely diced
• 2 tbsp fresh dill - finely chopped
• 4 tbsp sour cream
• ½ whole lemon - juice only
• 2 tbsp white vinegar
• ¼ tsp salt - to taste
• ¼ tsp white pepper - to taste

Instructions

 

• To a salad bowl, transfer the sliced cucumber rounds, chopped purple shallots, and diced gherkins (dill pickles).
• In a small bowl, stir the sour cream, juice of half a lemon, white vinegar, salt, white pepper, and fresh dill together to create the creamy dressing. Taste and adjust the seasoning to suit your palate.
• Pour the creamy dressing over the cucumber, shallots and gherkins, and use a large spoon to combine it well so everything is coated with the sour cream dressing.
• Refrigerate the salad for 15-20 minutes or so to chill the salad and allow the flavours to meld, but not for much longer, as it will start to get too wet.
• Just before serving the salad, stir it well as water may have gathered on the surface and bottom of the bowl, try it once more and adjust the seasoning again if you like.
• Transfer the salad to a serving bowl, sprinkle fresh sprigs of dill on top and serve immediately.

Notes

Garnish: more sprigs fresh dill

Nutrition

Calories: 187kcalCarbohydrates: 19gProtein: 5gFat: 10gSaturated Fat: 5gPolyunsaturated Fat: 0.5gMonounsaturated Fat: 2gCholesterol: 29mgSodium: 1512mgPotassium: 814mgFiber: 5gSugar: 11gVitamin A: 850IUVitamin C: 19mgCalcium: 130mgIron: 2mg

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