Asian-Inspired Cucumber Salad

This AMS original recipe is a cheap and easy vegetable side dish and can be made the night prior for your convenience. I love that it’s a unique twist on an ordinary vegetable that can be made in a short period of time. It’s classy and fun enough for a stay-at-home date night, but the pickled flavor should satisfy even the most unrefined palettes (read: kids and picky eaters).

Feel free to slice the cucumber with a knife or mandolin, but I got out my spiralizer for this one. I bought a Vegetti for $14.99 a while back. It’s hard on your wrist and difficult to clean, but overall it does the job. If you feel you would use it often, I would recommend investing in spiralizer that uses a crank rather than having you manually turn the vegetable.

Ginger is a very inexpensive way to kick up the flavor of dishes. The whole piece of ginger you see here was $0.66 and will last a long time in the freezer. I peel the whole fresh ginger using a spoon and then wrap it up in saran wrap before freezing. I like this method because then when it’s time to use it, I literally just grate what I need and then put the rest away. Another method would be to keep the peel on before freezing it and then using a vegetable peeler to remove the peel before grating. You’ll need a decent grater as ginger is pretty fibrous; I love my microplane grater/zester for the job.

Ingredients:

2-3 cucumbers

¼ cup seasoned rice vinegar

1 Tbsp sesame seeds

Fresh ginger (to taste)

Directions:

1. Either slice or spiralize cucumbers

2. Add rice vinegar and sesame seeds

3. Grate ginger to taste

4. Refrigerate for 2-4 hours before serving with a slotted spoon

Servings: 4

Nutrition Facts Per Serving:

Calories: 48

Fat: 1g

Sat Fat: 0.3g

Sodium: 242mg

Carbs: 9g

Fiber: 0.6g

Sugar: 5g

Protein: 0.5g

Vitamin A: 1% DV

Vitamin C: 3% DV

Calcium: 4% DV

Iron: 3% DV