This recipe for Asian cucumber salad is sliced cucumbers and colorful veggies tossed in a zesty sesame dressing. The perfect quick and easy side dish!
Marinated cucumber salad is a cool and refreshing complement to almost any meal. This Asian style cucumber salad utilizes soy sauce and sesame oil to bring lots of flavor without a lot of work. When I want a flavorful salad, I choose ramen noodle salad, Chinese chicken salad or this savory Asian cucumber salad.
Who doesn’t love cucumbers? They’re mildly flavored, super refreshing and are amazing in so many different dishes. This Asian cucumber salad is one of my family’s favorite sides, you can serve it alongside grilled chicken breast or honey garlic salmon and it makes the perfect picnic or potluck offering.
I often enjoy this salad with some of my Asian food favorites like beef lettuce wraps, ginger chicken, teriyaki shrimp stir fry.
Table of Contents
Asian Cucumber Salad Ingredients
To make this Asian cucumber salad, you will need cucumbers, a red onion and a red bell pepper. For the dressing make sure you have soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, honey, cilantro or green onion, sesame seeds, salt and black pepper. See the recipe card below for amounts and details.
How Do You Make Asian Cucumber Salad?
To make this Asian cucumber salad recipe, first slice your cucumbers and place them in a large bowl. Next, add your sliced red onion and chopped red bell pepper. Make the dressing by mixing together in a small bowl soy sauce, rice vinegar, toasted sesame oil, honey, chopped cilantro, sesame seeds, salt and black pepper. Pour the dressing over the salad. Toss everything together and enjoy!
Tips For The Perfect Asian Cucumber Salad
- Feel free to choose standard cucumbers, the long plastic wrapped English cucumbers, cute little Persian cucumbers or Japanese cucumbers. They all work for this salad.
- If you use standard cucumbers, remove the seeds before you slice them. If you use English, Persian or Japanese cucumbers you don’t need to remove the seeds as they tend to be smaller and softer than a standard cucumber.
- After you slice your cucumbers, feel free to let the cucumber slices drain on paper towels or in a colander for 5 minutes to make your salad less watery.
- To get thin slices of onion you can use a sharp knife or cut thin slices on a mandoline.
- You can make this salad a few hours in advance. However, be aware that the cucumbers will release liquid as they sit in the fridge, so your dressing might be a little thinner in consistency when you serve your salad.
Quick Tip
For a nice presentation, I run a vegetable peeler around each cucumber to make a striped pattern. It looks pretty and removes some of the waxy skin.
Recipe FAQs
Asian cucumber salad contains cucumber slices, thin red onion slices and chopped red bell pepper. These veggies are coated in a tangy soy sauce and sesame oil based salad dressing.
No, you do not need to soak cucumbers in salt water. If you want to reduce the water in your cucumbers, simply place your cucumber slices on a paper towel or in a colander for five minutes and let them drain.
Follow Me
Flavor Variations
This Asian cucumber salad is delicious and refreshing as is; however, you can modify the recipe to suit your own taste.
- Toppings: You can sprinkle on your favorite toppings like more sesame seeds and sliced scallions. You could add a little crunch with furikake, crispy fried onion pieces or wonton strips.
- Spicy: To bring the heat, mix a teaspoon of red pepper flakes into your dressing. If you want more heat, you could add a dash of sriracha sauce or chili oil.
- Dressing: You could change the flavor of the dressing my mixing in minced ginger, minced garlic, hoisin sauce or oyster sauce.
- Veggies: Feel free to add your favorite vegetables like edamame, shredded carrots, snap peas or snow peas.
This salad is so easy and delicious, I make it for dinner all the time. I also love to serve it at parties and potlucks. The only problem with it is how quickly it disappears!
More Salads You’ll Love
Winter Fruit Salad
10 mins
Asian Noodle Salad
18 mins
Thai Cucumber Salad
26 mins
Creamy Cucumber Salad
11 mins
Asian Cucumber Salad Video
Love This Recipe?
Please leave a 5-star 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 rating in the recipe card below & a review in the comments section further down the page.
Asian Cucumber Salad
Ingredients
- 3 cups cucumbers peeled, seeded and sliced
- 1/4 cup red onion thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup red bell pepper chopped
For the dressing:
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
- 2 teaspoons honey
- 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro or sliced green onion
- 1 tablespoon sesame seeds
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Place the cucumbers, red onion and red bell pepper in a large bowl.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, honey, cilantro and sesame seeds. Taste and add salt and pepper if desired.
- Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss to coat. Serve immediately or store in the refrigerator for up to 8 hours.
Notes
- Feel free to choose standard cucumbers, the long plastic wrapped English cucumbers, cute little Persian cucumbers or Japanese cucumbers. They all work for this salad.
- If you use standard cucumbers, remove the seeds before you slice them. If you use English, Persian or Japanese cucumbers you don’t need to remove the seeds as they tend to be smaller and softer than a traditional cucumber.
- For a nice presentation, I run a vegetable peeler around each cucumber to make a striped pattern. It looks pretty and removes some of the waxy skin.
So delicious, the dressing tastes amazing! I didn’t have red pepper so I substituted fresh seeded tomatoes & will definitely be making again!!!
Thank you for all your great recipes 😋
Very tasty and I find I’m making it almost every week now.
This salad looks great! Can you sub sugar for honey?
Yes that’s fine!
Can you add radishes?
Sure that would be fine!
Made this salad to go with a whole side off hot chilli , garlic Salmon with sticky rice.
It was absolutely gorgeous , that dressing is to die for but I only put one tablespoon of soya sauce as my first batch was a little overpowering .
Already had two friends ask for recipe.
I used the dressing to marinate chicken breast and threw in the salad to make it more of a lunch/dinner. Yum
This was delicious! I subbed shallot for the red onion and used both green onion (green parts only) and cilantro in the dressing. I also added some sriracha to give it a little kick. Served with Mongolian Beef from Home Chef . Can’t wait to eat the left overs today for lunch.
Can’t sop making this easy salad that lasts for 2 days! Thanks
Just delicious! Turns out it was still crisp and yummy the next day!
This looks delicious. I’ve been asked to bring the “Asian salad” to a dinner party of couples who have recently returned from the Far East. The host is serving Pork Stir Fry. I have a go to Asian salad with cabbage and roman noodle, but I wanted to try something different. Would this go with Pork Stir Fry do you think? Is regular Sesame Oil fine to use? Do you toast the sesame seeds? thank you.
This would go well with stir fry! I don’t toast the sesame seeds but you definitely can if you prefer.
I served this with Chicken Satay and steamed basmati rice. This salad was PERFECT! It was a little bit of summer! Thanks for the recipe!
Looks delicious! I have sesame oil at home/ is that the same as toasted sesame oil? Can I substitute or is there a way to “toast” my regular sesame oil? TIA!
Your sesame oil should work fine!
Perfectly seasoned, and just as refreshing as the picture. Easy and quick recipe, keeps well. Leave out the cilantro if like me you can’t tolerate it.
Great recipe! Very tasty and a definite go to!
Very tasty!
So glad you enjoyed it!
Amazing salad idea with cucumber. Looks so healthy and delicious also. Will try it soon.
Love the Asian spin on this. I may have to switch up my tomato cucumber salad with that tasty dressing recipe of yours. Yummy!
Been doing cucumber salad before and its usually what I love doing this past few weeks. Adding it a twist from time to time as well. Really one of my healthy foods nowadays.
I don’t do cucumbers but man. This salad looks ridiculously fresh and healthy!
I love cucumbers because they absorb flavor really well and they go perfectly with different sauces. I think this salad is a keeper especially since it’s refreshing. It can be enjoyed during Spring and Summer and it’s something that I’d make often!