This Spicy Cucumber Salad Blew My Mind 🤯

I absolutely love a Korean cucumber salad. I'm gonna show you how to make my version where cucumbers get smashed and then covered in an addictive, sweet, tangy, spicy dressing. It's pretty much the perfect summer side dish. You have a couple different cucumber varieties you can use in a traditional Korean cucumber salad. First off, a Korean cucumber. Not surprising, you can get these at Korean grocery stores, but it's okay if you don't have them because you can also use these mini Persian cucumbers, Japanese cucumbers, or an English cucumber, which you can find at any grocery store. I wouldn't use a standard pole cucumber because they're not as sweet, they're a little bit bitter, and they have lots of seeds. Basically, they are the green bell pepper of the cucumber family. They're just not that good. They're the worst. Don't use them. Just kidding. If you happen to have only pole cucumbers, you can use them in this recipe, but you want to peel them first because their skin is not as delicate. I'm gonna go ahead and use the small Persian cucumbers today because they're really easy to prepare. And what I'm gonna do is smash them. To do that, you're just going to slice them in half vertically and then take the flat, heavy side of your knife and just smush down on them, kind of like you would be smashing a garlic clove to remove the skin. Disclaimer, smashing cucumbers is just my personal preference. It's not the traditional method. Typically, you just slice the cucumber into rounds, but in my testing, when I sliced them thinly, they got soggy and lost their crunch. And when I sliced them thicker, they stayed crunchy, but they didn't absorb as much flavor. So smashing gets rid of both of these problems because they're not gonna be thin and wilt, but they're also gonna develop all these nooks and crannies and lots of texture where the dressing can really seep in and get really flavorful. It's also really satisfying to just smash down. It's a bit therapeutic if you have any anger or rage. Of course you do, it's 2022. This is a nice, healthy way to de-stress a little bit. And once you've smashed your cucumbers, you're going to either tear them apart into chunks with your hands like this. It's very easy. Or you're going to just chop them into chunks like this. As you might know, cucumbers are super watery. So to minimize the amount of water that seeps into our salad, I'm gonna add these cukes, cucumbers, to a colander, and I'm going to add some salt, massage it in. And through the power of osmosis, the salt is gonna draw out some of that excess moisture and you're gonna get crunchier cucumbers with more flavor. I'm gonna pop this in the fridge for about 30 minutes to let the salt do its magic. And in the meantime, we'll make everything else. All right, a little context for this dish. The Korean name for a spicy cucumber salad is ui-muchim. I hope I pronounced that remotely accurately. If you were to go to a Korean restaurant, you might be served this salad alongside some other vegetable side dishes like kimchi or stir-fried eggplant in little bowls as accompaniments for your main course. And personally, I like to serve this as an appetizer or a side dish if I have company coming over. But if it's just Max and I on a Tuesday night, I like to round it out with some tofu and rice for a light dinner. I've got a couple of scallions and a large shallot, and these are going to add a sharp, oniony bite to contrast with the really mild-flavored cucumbers. For the scallions, I'm just going to trim off the top inch or so that's bruised and then slice them hard on a bias. And we'll save the dark green parts for the garnish. And for the shallot, just thinly slice it. Okay, now for our dressing. This is where all of the flavor comes in. We're gonna start with two tablespoons of gochujang. This is an essential in Korean cooking. It's a fermented red chili paste, and it's so good. It's been fermented for several months, so it's a great source of umami, but it's also sweet because it's got fermented glutinous rice. It's also salty, it's spicy, it's tangy. Basically, a blend of all the best flavors. And you can find it at Korean grocery stores, obviously, Pan-Asian grocery stores. Some bougier grocery stores are selling it these days, as well as online. As an aside, I highly recommend checking out your local East Asian market if you have one. There's so much fun stuff you wouldn't find at a standard supermarket. All kinds of vinegars, so many varieties of soy sauce, fermented pastes and seaweeds, a huge variety of dried mushrooms, as well as noodles, tons of fruits and vegetables and herbs you wouldn't find at a Western grocery store, and of course, lots of tofu. And this stuff will last in your fridge for a year or two, so you can use it in marinades and dressings. It's really good with tofu and tempeh, barbecue sauces, stir fries, noodle soups, noodles, all kinds of things. And the sister ingredient for gochujang is gochugaru. These are Korean red chili flakes. These are actually used to make the paste we used earlier, and they're really mild, so they're a great chili flake for baby mouths because they're not as spicy as, say, a red pepper flake. They've got a nice, subtle sweet fruitiness, a little bit of smokiness, and they're just really lovely. A tablespoon of soy sauce, which is going to enhance the salty savoriness of the gochujang. We've also got some toasted sesame oil, very commonly used in Korean cooking, and one of my absolute favorite ingredients. It's nutty, it's rich, it's super unique, but not all sesame oils are created equally, so this one is my favorite brand because some of them aren't that good. I won't name them, but I'm gonna use a tablespoon and a half right now. If you really love sesame oil, you can use two tablespoons, but I would taste it before you add more. We also need a little bit of sugar, just two teaspoons. This is organic cane sugar. You could also use agave. And this is going to really enhance the salty umami flavors. Just gonna get a really nice sweet and salty contrast. So far, we've got spicy flavors, sweet, savory, salty, so now we need a little bit of tang to balance everything out, and we're gonna use a tablespoon of rice vinegar. And for some extra flavor, some garlic, of course. We're just gonna mince three cloves of garlic into the dressing. And I'm not listing every precise measurement here because you can find all of that along with tips and substitutions for this recipe in the blog post at rainbowplantlife.com. I've got it linked in the description box below. All right, let's just give this a taste. So good. It took just a few minutes and a few ingredients, but they're all really high... Got a little chili flake. They're all really high-impact ingredients, so it's unbelievably flavorful. And now it's time to go check on our cucumbers. All right, let's see how much water our cucumbers have drained. It's quite a bit. All this would have stayed in the salad if we hadn't done this step, but we can still get rid of a little more water, so I'm gonna squeeze them over the sink to try to get some more out. And now we're just gonna pour our dressing into the cucumbers, the shallots, the scallions. It's such a beautiful color. Look at that gorgeous red hue. I'm just gonna use my hands to massage the dressing into the cucumbers for about a minute so they can absorb all of that flavor. This does not look great. You look like you just left a crime scene. Delicious crime scene. Now you're gonna wanna sprinkle on some roasted sesame seeds for a nutty crunch, and grab those reserved scallion greens from earlier for a fresh, onion-y bite. It's so flavorful from the gochujang. It's spicy, salty, sweet, and it was so quick to make, so it's perfect for all of your easy summer entertaining. As always, you can get the printable recipe on the blog post. Thanks for watching. Bye!