Asian Spicy Sesame Cucumber Salad Recipe
Once you taste one of these thin spicy marinated cucumber slices, you’ll automatically reach for more! When the spicy red pepper flakes and the crunchy sesame seeds hit your mouth, you’ll rejoice in unique flavor of this Asian cucumber salad!
The authentic Asian dressing of sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce and sugar permeates the thin cucumber slices, making them taste truly marinated and so unique! The taste is so complex, with a combination of sweet, sour, salty, tangy, spicy and crunchy
I love to get this cucumber salad in Japanese restaurants as an appetizer before sushi 🙂 Making the cucumber sesame salad yourself costs a fraction of what you pay in a restaurant! The restaurants serve you a puny bowl for around $5… you can get enough cucumbers to feed a crowd for this much! Since the cucumbers are sliced so thin in this salad, one cucumber really goes a long way!
I like to make this cucumber sesame salad spicier than a typical restaurant version. They just sprinkle a few red pepper flakes mainly for the show and you can barely taste them. Since you are the one making the salad, you can control how much pepper you are getting and how much sesame too! I like to be generous with the red pepper flakes and sesame seeds because that’s exactly how I like it – spicy and crunchy! When you make food yourself, you are the boss!
This spicy Asian cucumber sesame salad is super easy to make. All you need to do is slice the cucumbers as thin as possible, then dress with a simple dressing and sprinkle with red pepper flakes and sesame to taste. If you have a mandoline slicer, this would be a good time to put it to use. If not, just use the knife and slice the cucumbers as thin as you can. I own a mandoline but was too lazy to take it out, so I used the knife – that’s why my slices on the pic are not as thin as they could have been, but who cares 🙂
Another great thing about this cucumber sesame salad is that you can make it as few hours ahead. Most salads have to be eaten immediately, but this salad actually benefits from a few hours of marinating. If not eating right away, just cover and put in a refrigerator, so the dressing will truly permeate the cucumber slices, yum!
Ingredients :
- 2 cucumbers
- 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp sesame seeds
- ½ tsp red pepper flakes
Instructions :
- Slice the cucumbers as thin as possible.
- Put the dressing ingredients in a cup: rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce and sugar. Whisk with a fork to combine.
- Put the cucumber slices in a bowl, pour dressing over them and toss to coat. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and red pepper flakes and toss to combine.
