Hi Guys, today I’ll show you how to make a Cucumber, Tomato and Onion salad. I had a similar salad at a Middle Eastern Restaurant and couldn’t wait to recreate it at home. It’s an extremely simple salad but it’s so tasty. It’s one of those salads that you want to keep eating. I’ll put all the ingredients in the description below.
Ingredients:
2 seedless cucumbers
3 ripe tomatoes
¼ cup or more fresh lemon juice
2 cups romaine lettuce
¼ of a medium red onion
1 tsp dried mint leaves
½ tsp salt
½ tsp sugar
¼ tsp ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
We’ll need 2 seedless cucumbers, these are the variety without the large seeds found in regular cucumbers. You can substitute the small persian cucumbers for these large ones. A few ripe tomatoes, fresh lemons, a quarter of a medium onion, you don’t want too much onion, it’ll overwhelm the salad. Romaine lettuce, a small bunch. Dried mint leaves, now if you can’t find this you can use fresh mint leaves or even some fresh flat leaf parsley. A lot of middle eastern salads contain fresh parsley, so you can definitely add the parsley even in addition to the dried or fresh mint. I want to keep it exactly like the restaurant version so I’m adding only the dried mint. Get a big bowl. Trim the ends of the cucumber. Cut it in half and half again. You want everything in small pieces for this salad. I’ll cut this into three pieces. Line them up and cut into small pieces. Chop up the onion. Cut three lemons in half so we can juice them later. Cut three tomatoes in half. I always keep a bowl to put the waste in, it’s much easier for cleanup. We want to get all the juice and seeds out of the tomatoes for this salad. Look at how much liquid comes out of the tomatoes, you don’t want that in this type of salad. Now cut the tomatoes into small pieces. So we have the cucumbers, tomatoes and onion in the bowl. Let’s work on the lettuce. These are washed and dried leaves of romaine. Put them on top of each other to form a neat pile. Trim off the hard ends. The lettuce should be in small pieces as well. Cut straight down the middle and slice. If the leaves are larger, cut into three pieces. This is a delicate salad, not one with big torn up leaves. This is about 2 cups of lettuce. If you don’t have a juicer, put a large strainer over a bowl and squeeze the lemons. We’ll need about a ¼ cup of lemon juice. I always squeeze a little extra just in case. Take 1 tsp of the dried mint and crush it in your palms right over the bowl. Add ½ tsp salt, lemon juice and 2 tblsps of olive oil. Add ¼ tsp ground black pepper and ½ tsp sugar to balance out the lemon juice. Mix this really well. Taste and adjust the seasonings if you like. I eat this salad right away. You can also let it sit for 30 minutes and the flavors will get even deeper. If you let it sit, there will be more liquid in the bowl since we’ve added salt and it draws water out of the vegetables.
Since I’ve added lettuce, this salad won’t be great to keep in the fridge, the lettuce will wilt and get soggy the next day. If you want to make this salad ahead of time, add the lettuce right before you want to serve it so it stays crunchy. The cucumber, onion and tomato will be fine in the fridge for a day or two. When I had this salad at the restaurant, there was only a little bit of liquid in it. They probably add the dressing to the vegetables just before serving so you can also do that. Prep the bowl of vegetables ahead of time and pour the dressing on when you’re ready to eat. This is a perfect salad for the warmer weather. It makes a great side to any grilled meat or fish. The lemon juice is so bright, fresh and makes this salad addictive. It’s extremely healthy, so you can eat as much as you want. Try this simple salad and let me know how you like it. Subscribe and I’ll see you next time. Thanks for watching :)
