Cucumber Sesame Salad

Cucumber Sesame Salad with Caesar Dressing is perfect summer salad. Crunchy, spicy and loaded with tangy flavour of homemade Caesar dressing, this salad is refreshing. Pair this as a side with any main course recipe or relish fresh as a hearty salad meal.

About The Recipe

Fresh and easy to make cucumber and roasted sesame seeds salad is hearty and healthy summer salad recipe. Made with minimal ingredients, this salad is bliss.

In any salad, salad dressing plays a key role. Salad dressing brings flavour, makes salad palatable and adds taste to it.

Homemade Caesar Dressing is easy to make, fuss free and full of flavour. You can easily refrigerate this in a moisture free airtight jar. Stays fresh for a week.

Cucumbers are juicy, cooling and filling. These are perfect for any summer salad recipe. Cucumbers are often hailed as a great source of hydration due to its high-water content of 95%. 

Roasted sesame seeds add crunch, taste and nutty flavour to salad. I always have a jar of roasted sesame seeds handy in my pantry. Believe me, they come handy when in need.

Main Ingredients & Variations

Cucumber: I use organic, green, long and slender cucumbers for salad making. I peel the skin and cut them into roundels. You can even dice them into cubes. You can retain the skin if you like.

Taste the seeds, before you cut into any shape. Sometimes, seeds of cucumber will be bitter and add bitter taste to the salad. If seeds are bitter, discard the seeds and use the fleshy part. Rarely, even fleshy part of cucumber will be bitter. It is always advisable to taste the cucumber before adding it to any recipe.

Red Chili Flakes: Adding red chili flakes bring heat and spice in the salad. These add pop of color to the salad.

Coconut Sugar: This imparts taste and flavour in salad. Instead of coconut sugar you can use brown sugar or cane sugar or jaggery powder, etc. Adding coconut sugar to cucumber salad is purely optional.

Sesame Seeds: Roasted sesame seeds add crunch and nutty taste in salad. I used white sesame seeds. You can easily roast sesame seeds in oven or on stove or in microwave.

Roasting Sesame Seeds In Oven

• Spread sesame seeds in thin and even layer on a baking tray. Place in a pre-heated oven for 5-6 minutes.
• Keep an eye on the sesame seeds and give it a toss after 3 minutes. Roast till the sesame seeds turn light brown.

How To Roast Sesame Seeds In Microwave

• Spread sesame seeds on a microwave safe plate and microwave for 3-5 minutes. Toss for every 30-40 seconds.
• Microwave till sesame seeds turn nice light brown. Remove and leave to cool.

Roasting Sesame Seeds On Stovetop

• In a thick bottom pan, add sesame seeds and place on a stove. Roast on low flame by tossing in between till sesame seeds start to change color.
• Be careful, while roasting sesame seeds on stovetop. When the seeds start to roast, then start to pop and fall out of the pan.

Homemade Caesar Dressing: A salad is incomplete without dressing. A quick and easy dressing lifts the taste, flavour and calorie quotient of the salad. I have shared a very simple, easy and vegetarian version of Caesar salad dressing in the recipe card below.

Coming to the variations, you can add

• chopped roma tomatoes or cherry tomatoes
• sliced onions
• boiled chickpeas
• crumbled paneer or feta
• roasted peanuts or cashews
• finely chopped green chilies
• roughly chopped lettuce, etc.

Cucumber Sesame Salad

I am not a big fan of salads, I do make them once or twice a week. I also don’t have the habit of munching raw vegetables along with my meals. But when it is only me alone at lunch time, then I do make quick and simple salad in meal.

My today’s post is example for one such quick-fix salad. I love juicy cucumbers and I make it a point to make this fresh salad often during summer. Juicy cucumbers, roasted sesame, spicy red chili flakes, sweet coconut sugar and tangy dressing makes this salad unique and appetizing.

Why Should I Try This Cucumber Salad?

• It is easy to make
• Flavoursome
• Healthy
• Refreshing & Hydrating
• Best for summer

What To Serve This Salad With?

You can serve this salad as a side with any main course recipe like,

Chicken Satay

Skillet Pizza

Biryani

Luqmi

Millet Daleem

Tawa Fish Fry

Or else you can even have this as a fresh, light and hearty meal on a hot summer day.

Cooking with an Ingredient – ‘Cucumber’

On 10^th of every month, we bunch of Muslim Food Bloggers come together to participate in theme based Muslim Food Blogger Challenge (MFBC) event. And theme for this month is ‘Cooking with an Ingredient – Cucumber’.

As I kept missing the deadline since few months, I thought I will make it on time this month to be part of MFBC. Allhumdlliah, I am glad that I could do it. This MFBC is brainchild of Rafeeda of The Big Sweet Tooth. Thank you, Rafee, for coming up with easy and fun themes to keep this event rolling. This post is for you Rafeeda. Scroll down to check what Rafeeda and my other Muslim Food Bloggers have come up with this gorgeous green veggie, Cucumber.