German Cucumber Salad Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is German salad made of? ›

German Potato Salad Ingredients

Bacon: Bacon (and its grease) adds tons of meaty flavor to the hearty German potato salad. Onion: An onion, cooked in bacon grease, lends even more complexity and flavor. Vinegar: White vinegar adds tanginess that cuts through the richness from the potatoes and bacon.

This easy cucumber salad consists of nothing more than the cucumbers, some rice vinegar, either dill or basil, and salt and pepper. You don't even really need the herbs!

Just place the slices or chunks in a colander over a bowl or sink. Sprinkle them with a couple of pinches of salt, toss to coat, and let them rest for about 30 minutes. Pat them dry with a paper towel and proceed with the recipe.

In this recipe, I call for English cucumbers, the variety that often comes wrapped in plastic at the grocery store. They have very thin, delicate skins, so there's no need to peel them. If you can't find English cucumbers, Persian cucumbers are a great substitute.

Whilst there are regional variations in food culture, most German recipes focus heavily on bread, potatoes, and meat, especially pork, as well as plenty of greens such as types of cabbage and kale. Cake, coffee, and beer are all highly popular elements of German cuisine too - which will be good news to most!

Field salad (Valerianella locusta), known as feldsalat in German, is used like lettuce in salad. It is also famously known as Rapunzel Lettuce, after the vitamin-rich food that cost a peasant family their only daughter in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

Salt can bring out the natural flavours of cucumbers and make them taste more vibrant. Sprinkle a pinch of salt over sliced cucumbers and let them sit for a few minutes to draw out excess moisture. Rinse the cucumbers with water to remove the salt and pat them dry. The result will be a crisper and tastier cucumber.

Cucumbers consist mostly of water, and they also contain important electrolytes. They can help prevent dehydration in hot weather or after a workout. For people who do not enjoy drinking water, adding cucumber and mint can make it more attractive.

Cucumbers contain upto 96% water content, which can keep you hydrated and meet daily needs. Getting enough water through fruits and vegetables ensures that cells get proper nutrition, you fight off exhaustion and stay energized through the day. Hence, cucumbers make for a good snacking option as well. Yes!

A cucumber's bitterness is caused by cucurbitacin, a bitter chemical that protects the plant from predators. Usually, cucurbitacin stays in the stem and leaves, but it can work its way into the fruit. A cucumber's bitterness is caused by cucurbitacin, a bitter chemical that protects the plant from predators.

What not to store cucumbers with? ›

Ensure that the cucumbers are stored away from ethylene-producing fruits like tomatoes, apples, and bananas. Ethylene can cause cucumbers to ripen and spoil more quickly. Avoid placing cucumbers near foods with strong odors as they absorb odors easily.

No matter how you dress them, salting and draining sliced cucumbers maximizes crunchy texture. The challenge: More often than not, by the time you eat a cucumber salad the cucumbers have gone soft and watery, losing their appealing crunch and diluting the dressing to near tastelessness.

1 consists of cucumbers which are fairly well colored, fairly well formed, not overgrown, and which are fresh, firm, and free from decay, sunscald and from damage caused by scars, yellowing, sunburn, dirt or other foreign materials, freezing, mosaic or other disease, insects, cuts, bruises, mechanical or other means.

Striped Armenian is one of the sweetest cucumbers. It has small seeds and thin skin. Though it looks like a cucumber, it is actually a melon—a species of Cucumis.

Persian cucumbers

Crisper, more flavourful and easier to eat than other cucumber varieties, the pint-sized Persian cucumber is the perfect pick me up for fresh summer salads and soups. Try making salad-e shirazi (Persian cucumber, tomato and onion salad): a popular Iranian recipe, courtesy of NYT Cooking.

There are two main differences between American and German Potato salads. American potato salad is usually tossed in a mayonnaise-based dressing and served cold. German potato salad is tossed in a vinegar-based dressing and is traditionally served warm (but you can totally serve it cold too! It's still delicious!).

One of the most popular salads in Germany is the iceberg lettuce. Iceberg lettuce tastes very fresh for a long time long due to its tight and well-hydrated leaves.

The white vegetable in the photo above is actually asparagus. The green variety is more popular in other countries, but Germans love their white asparagus and anxiously await its arrival in spring, keeping a lookout in late April for the first stalks of their "white gold" to appear in stores and roadside stands.

The scientific name for this lettuce-like green is Valerianella locusta, but in Germany, it's better known as feldsalat (literally, "field salad"). This isn't just a case of a plant being given different names in different languages, however.