Smashed Cucumber Salad - Garlicky, Refreshing and Spicy! | The Woks of Life

Hi, everybody. This is Judy from The Walks of Life. Today, we're making smashed Asian cucumber salad. We make this recipe all the time. This is a great side dish for summertime. The smashed method creates all those rough edges. Just like the pasta, we want to have crevices where they grab the sauce, they retain the sauce. For this recipe, we need light soy sauce. Even though a lot of the bottles say soy sauce, they may not taste the same. I have readers saying that, oh, mine is very bland. It doesn't taste like anything. If your ingredients don't have fermented soybeans, that means it is really not the soy sauce that you want to use. Then we have rice vinegar, sesame oil, sugar, and cilantro. If you don't like cilantro, then use scallion instead. Garlic is a must because that's where a lot of the flavor comes from. And then is the chili oil. If you cannot tolerate heat, then you can omit it. We have the Persian, this little cucumber, which is actually my favorite. And then we have the English cucumber, very popular these days. And this is your everyday cucumber. It is crucial that you wash it thoroughly. I usually peel this off. I brush the outside with a vegetable brush. This smashing process is really a test to see how fresh your cucumber is. Because if it's really fresh, you will have no problem smashing. But if it's tough, then it's like smashing out of rubber. And that would be very hard. First, you cut the two ends off. You don't need those. You need a cleaver because it's the weight and the flat surface. But I know that not everybody has cleaver. Sarah said that you can use a rolling pin. So I'm gonna try it with both. I start with the cleaver. See that? It's cracking. I don't try to de-seed it because the seed, you can eat it, it's fine. So you just open it up. And for wider sections, slice it a couple of times. And then what I do is cut it into large sections. And as you can see, there's a lot of crevices, a lot of rough edges, just like, you know, different kind of pasta, right? Those like shells, rough surfaces to catch the sauce. The reason I like this particular cucumber is because it's very little seeds. It's super, super crunchy. And this cucumber, usually I don't de-seed it. I would just smash it and I just pick up the flesh as well as if there's any seed attached to it, I'll serve it. But for this particular cucumber, you really have to slice it open and scoop out the seed because the seed in this cucumber is quite large and it really affects the experience. You wanna put your hands in the middle so you have more control. Oh. Oh! Piece flew off. So it's pretty fresh. Okay. The rolling pin works for sure. Certain recipes, even us applied on stir fry zucchini with the chicken, we salted the cucumber. In this case, it's a zucchini. Let it release liquid, dump out the liquid, and then you apply your sauce. It has pros and cons. When you do that, the cucumber definitely takes on a lot more crunchy texture. Not the salt, like the refreshing crunch. It's a slightly like marinated, fermented crunch. I don't like to apply that method to this particular recipe because it is the heat of summer. You need that liquid and it's all that goodness that you're dumping out. So I'm not sure it's wise. Since we post this recipe, the internet has found a cute way of cutting the cucumber in between two chopsticks so you don't cut it through. You slice it on a 45 degree angle. You turn over and now you do the other side. You can put a whole cucumber in your mouth. My advice is to cut it into like bite size. This is fresh harvested garlic from our garden. Aren't they pretty? For cold salads, it's actually very important to mince the garlic. But then again, if you're northerners, they love to take a garlic and they just bite on it. Take on like sips of a noodle, a bite of garlic. We're gonna do our best to mince it. Voila. Here's a little tip. When you use measuring spoons, you wanna do the dry ingredients first. Then you do the wet ingredients. So this way you don't have to wash twice. Sugar, sesame oil, light soy sauce, rice vinegar. One. You know how to do half? Here's a little tip. You tilt it like 45, just about. To the point that it's gonna start dripping, that's when you know you gotta half. We forgot sesame seeds. We forgot sesame seeds earlier. It is not crucial, but a good add-on. And now melt the sugar. Because the fact that cucumber sweats a lot, it's basically all liquid in it. We can pre-make the sauce, put it aside, and then you smash the cucumber. You only combine the two right before you're serving. If you let it sit, the cucumber is gonna release a lot of, a lot of liquid. And it's gonna basically dilute the sauce and it's gonna taste like nothing. We're ready to serve. So I'm combining the sauce to the cucumber. No waste. And then I'm gonna toss it. Add the cilantro in. Okay. Transfer into your serving bowl. Couple of leaves to hide the imperfection. The toasted sesame seeds. Two teaspoon. And lastly, chili oil. I have to use a clean spoon because you don't wanna contaminate this. They will spoil much, much faster. If you don't have time to make chili oil, you can just use your favorite chili sauce, the crystals, the franks. Ah. Yeah. Ew. Yeah, why not? You can use Lao Gan Ma chili, you know, crisps. Anything you have in the refrigerator. Rita always ask us, it's like, do you eat the chilies? Yes, for sure. You eat the chilies. And you just drizzle however much you want. Voila. So time to taste it. Actually, you know what? You should have tasted it right before you put into the dill, okay? But now this is your presentation. Hola. Mucho heavy. So we're gonna have a taste. It's hot outside too. Cooling cucumber. And this chili oil, it's spot. There's a couple of things that I want to bring it to your attention. The size of your cucumber, that matters as to how salty it is. Another thing is that it depends on which chili oil that you're gonna use. Some chili sauce is very salty. Very salty. So keep that in mind. I noticed you put slightly less garlic. Sometimes you really garlic it up. Oh my God. I thought that was a lot of garlic. I could blow down an army, but I don't know. Everyone's eating it, you're okay. So good. The chili definitely is a hot element. So if you want to cool yourself down, you may not want to add a chili oil, but for taste buds, you may want to add the chili oil. So you decide. So if you like her video and this recipe, be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and visit us at thewalksoflife.com. What? I was using those as maracas earlier. I'm gonna hold it in the middle so I don't look like a crazy lady. Can you put this knife over there? Oh, I need a measuring cup. There's a roblox everywhere. It's like wiping the bowl. They slow you down. You gotta enjoy the process.