Chef Yotam Ottolenghi’s Smacked Cucumber Salad Recipe

A smacked cucumber salad heavily features fresh cucumbers that you tap with a knife; this process breaks down cucumbers’ texture so they can better absorb flavors, particularly salt.

There are several variations on cucumber salad. In Eastern Europe, a cucumber salad may include fresh dill and sour cream, while in Asia, rice vinegar and sesame oil dress the salad.

Chef Yotam Ottolenghi’s easy cucumber salad recipe includes sesame seeds, parsley leaves, garlic, and olive oil. His recipe provides balance to starchier or meat-based dishes. “Cucumbers have this incredible grassy flavor,” Chef Yotam says. “And because they’ve got a high water content, they’re quite refreshing, and that’s why we love cucumbers in all our chopped salads all over the Mediterranean. It’s all about that freshness.”

Chef Yotam Ottolenghi offers a few tips to take your smacked cucumber salad to the next level.

1. 1. Try Persian or Lebanese cucumbers. Chef Yotam prefers to use Persian or Lebanese cucumbers “because they are not quite as waterlogged as the bigger cucumbers.” However, you can also use English cucumbers, as long as you remove the seeds.
2. 2. Play around with herbs. Chef Yotam’s smacked cucumber salad recipe calls for making a parsley oil salad dressing. However, you can use other types of fresh herbs. “With cucumbers, you can use all sorts of herbs. I like cilantro. . . Dill is fantastic,” he says. “Soft herbs would work perfectly well with a cucumber.”
3. 3. Pair the salad with sumac onions. Sumac onions, or thinly sliced red onions pickled in a marinade of sumac and lemon juice, are a Middle Eastern condiment. The onion salad is versatile enough to pair with a wide range of foods. “They have a very sour, lemony flavor and that is really, really what you want with these cucumbers,” Chef Yotam says. “These contrasts that you get between the parsley and the oil and the onion, with the sumac, is what makes this salad so spectacular to look at.”