Creamy Cucumber Salad With Dill

0:00It's time for a recipe of the day. I wish I could say that this was my go-to recipe for when I need a vegetable with dinner and don't have one, but unfortunately there is a member of my household who does not like the main ingredient in this salad. And so, this is my go-to recipe for when I don't have a vegetable and need one and a certain member of my household is not here. And that certain member is not Marty. It is my eldest child who does not like cucumbers, which makes me so sad because I like them so much. And actually the rest of us really love them too. So, well, it's fine. It just means that I have this less often than I would like to, but you can have it as often as you like to. So this is a recipe for a creamy cucumber salad with dill. And it is a Ukrainian classic dish or even like Slavic generally that I learned from my Ukrainian Baba. She used to make it all the time and my mom makes it all the time. I make it a little bit differently than I learned from them though they tend to put a

1:01little bit of vinegar and sugar in theirs and I don't. I really just like it creamy and salty. So the recipe has some optional ingredients basically the vinegar and the sugar and then you can decide if you want those or not. I have tested all the versions and the way that I make it is the way that I love it and the other way does taste like what I grew up having. So it is that authentic salad for sure. It's just not the way that I usually make it. So this is a cucumber salad and as you probably know cucumbers have a lot of liquid in them. If you've ever made Tsitsiki you know you have to like drain the liquid out of those cucumbers. So if you are making this salad ahead of time you do want to get the liquid out of those cucumbers. If you're making it to have like in the next 15, 20, 30 minutes you do not have to do this step having said that. If you make it to have like in the next little while and then you either change your mind or you have leftovers and you go to have it the next day and it's watery. I have a solution for that as well. So first I'm going to tell you what to do to the cucumbers.

2:04If you want them to not be watery in your make ahead cucumber salad and then I'm going to tell you what to do. If you end up with watery cucumber salad for any reason because you forgot to do that step or because even actually if you do that step sometimes there is a little bit of extra liquid because cucumbers just really are quite watery. Okay so what you do is you get your cucumber and I'm using English cucumbers here and you cut them in half a lengthwise so all along the length of them and then use a spoon to just scrape out the seeds from the middle. You end up with kind of this long tubular half moon that you're then going to slice into one eighth inch slices and you're going to have a whole bunch of one eighth inch little half moons essentially right. Now the reason you scrape those seeds out is because that is where most of the liquid is and so you just scrape those out and discard them or you know put them in your water and give them a stir you've got cucumber water now right but crucially they are not going in your salad. Now that removes a lot of the liquid but you can do more. So you slice that cucumber or those two have cucumbers up into your one eighth of an

3:07inch slices and then you can salt them and put them in a colander for 30 minutes that draws out some liquid or you can skip that either way whether you do that salting or not you can then put your cucumber slices half moons slices on some paper towel and put some more on top and just block them. So if you salted them more water will have come to the surface and then when you blot more water will be removed if you did not do that salting step though and you're just putting them paper towel some more water will come out and you'll see it like your hands will get wet through the paper towel. So that is how you remove the liquid from the cucumbers how you drain some of the liquid from them. Now I'm going to tell you to make the salad and then I'm going to tell you what to do if you go to serve it later on and it's not as creamy as it was has got a little watery so I'll save that for the end. Let's make the salad in a large bowl you're mixing together a half a cup of sour cream. I have tried this with Greek yogurt and I did not like it but I just grew up having this with sour cream so it could be that okay if you love Greek yogurt and things go

4:09for it I'm sure it's going to work but half a cup of sour cream and a quarter teaspoon of salt. Now if you are using the vinegar you're also going to stir in two teaspoons of plain white vinegar and if you're using the sugar a pinch of that is going in right here now I don't include either of those two things. So stir together whatever you've added to your bowl and then you're adding in one medium English cucumber in one eighth inch slices if you're serving this soon then you're going to have your cucumber in round slices because you didn't have to have it lengthwise and get rid of those seeds or if you're planning to have this later you've done that step. Either way it is one cucumber in those slices goes into that bowl along with a half of a small onion finely sliced and I will say sometimes I add that and sometimes I don't. I have another cucumber onion salad recipe that I make and also that one that I told you about the creamy cucumber with mint those have onion in them and I tend to go with one of those if I want that onion flavor but I think it is classic in this dish for some

5:13people to have the onion so it's included there. So half of a small onion very finely sliced and half a cup of fresh dill friends. This is one of those recipes when it comes to dill where I have learned from my mom and I say you put twice as much dill as you think you need and then you put twice as much again it is a lot of dill. So you stir that up and then you serve it you can put it in the fridge for 15 to 30 minutes give it a stir before serving it'll be great then but if you leave it for longer like I said it could be watery and even if you did do the draining trick the next day it might be a little bit watery. What you're going to do is get another bowl and then don't stir the salad take it out of the fridge you notice there's some water there use some tongs to transfer the cucumber along with any dressing that's clean to them any onion dill any of that into a new bowl then use a fork or a slotted spoon to get out any bits of like dill or onion that are still at the bottom of the bowl in the water if you can okay now you have a bowl that is cucumber and no water and to that you're

6:18going to add a couple tablespoons of sour cream okay stir that up when it gets as creamy as you like you might have to add three tablespoons four tablespoons add that in until it's nice and creamy again then give it a taste and you might want to add a little bit more salt you might want to add some more vinegar sugar if you were using that but it should be much better again okay that is how you make a classic creamy cucumber dill salad I will put the link to this recipe in the show notes for this podcast episode or you can add to cook the story dot com slash our O T D and get it there or find it in our Facebook group Facebook dot com slash groups slash recipe O T D and hey just a quick note I'm on a recording hiatus right now so for the next little while I'm replaying episodes from the archives including this one if you heard me mention a holiday a season or something going on in my life that seemed a bit off that's why thanks so much for listening and I hope you're enjoying these older episodes I am Christine Pittman from cookthestory.com thecookful.com cook for two dot us and from this podcast recipe of the day I hope you have a great day let's get cooking