Salt and Pepper Smashed Cucumber Salad

What if I told you that you could transform a humble cucumber into an impressive dish with nothing more than a generous amount of seasoning, the right vinaigrette, and a good smashing? (Yes, smashing.) With these smart upgrades, it’s easy to turn a cucumber into a showstopping, single-ingredient salad. Here’s how to do it.

The trick to making this salad taste so good all comes down to two simple techniques. The first is smashing the cucumbers, a technique used in the popular Chinese cucumber salad pai huang gua. Lightly smashing the cucumbers creates scraggly edges that trap the vinaigrette, and the different shapes and sizes make for textural contrast in every bite.

After smashing, you’ll move onto the second technique: salting the cucumbers. You’ll toss them in a generous amount of salt and transfer them to a colander to drain (you’ll be surprised at just how much water comes out of them). By removing this excess water, you concentrate their bright, cucumber-y flavor. Not only do they become crisp, but also meaty. (You’ll understand when you taste them.) Letting them sit also gives the salt time to dissolve and season the cucumbers, so they take on a somewhat pickled flavor.

At first glance, you might think this recipe calls for way too much salt and pepper. But most of the salt is used to draw out the moisture from the cucumbers during the draining step, and the remaining salt helps bring out the cucumber’s natural flavor. It won’t make the salad taste salty — only more cucumber-y.

Because cucumbers contain so much water, the generous amount of black pepper helps the spicy flavor come through. If you’re sensitive to spice, however, you can start with less and add more to taste.