This Healthy Cucumber Salad with sliced cucumbers, onions, fresh dill and a touch of vinegar comes together in 10 minutes. The perfect crispy, tangy summer side dish!
Stay cool as a cucumber this season with creamy cucumber salad, Thai cucumber salad and cucumber tomato salad options!
If you love all things vinegar and dill, this healthy cucumber salad is for you!
It’s made with crisp cucumber and red onion slices, a bit of oil and vinegar, salt and pepper, and a sprinkle of dill to finish it off. It couldn’t be a more easy or more refreshing healthy salad!
Reader’s Review
I had printed this recipe off and it was on my list to make. Well, today we came in late from fishing and I had to get the sides ready quickly. I made this and it was the perfect vegetable dish after a long day in the Florida summer heat.
Ellen Jomnes
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- 10 minute recipe: Chop and slice, toss, and eat!
- Flavorful and refreshing: Tangy cool taste perfect for hot summer days.
- Cucumber season rescue: When your garden is overloaded, you can make this easy salad daily to use them up.
- Goes with everything: It’s great as a side dish for grilled meat, fish, and your favorite BBQ burger.
Ingredients for Healthy Cucumber Salad
- Cucumbers: I use English cucumbers because they have thin skin and do not require peeling. Also, Persian and pickling cucumbers will work, which are smaller in diameter. You will want to peel the garden cucumber variety.
- Dill: Use fresh not dried dill weed. Substitute for chives, if necessary.
- Red onion: It’s mild, slice thinly. You can also use white onion but avoid sharp yellow onion.
- Oil: I like to use extra virgin olive oil in salads. Use your favorite one.
- White vinegar: It is my favorite vinegar for this salad. Next best thing would be white wine vinegar, then red wine vinegar.
- Salt and pepper.
How to Make Cucumber Salad
- Slice cucumbers: Slice large cucumbers into half moon shapes and small cucumbers into rounds. Transfer to a large salad bowl.
- Chop dill and onion: Cut onion in 4 quarters, then thinly slice and allow the strands to fall apart. Remove dill weed from thick stems for more pleasant salad texture, chop it up and add to the bowl with cucumbers.
- Combine and toss: Add oil, vinegar, salt and pepper over the vegetables and gently stir to combine.
Tips for Best Results
- Just right cucumber thickness: Don’t cut it too thin, so cucumber slices can’t hold their shape. And don’t cut them too thick, so salad is hard to eat.
- Use mandoline: It helps to get cucumbers the same size.
- Peel the tough skin: It won’t usually be necessary only if it’s a thick field cucumber, the one that has bitter skin or waxy cucumbers from the store in January.
- For more flavor: Add a small clove of freshly grated garlic.
- Make it creamy: Add 3 tablespoons of full fat Greek yogurt, regular yogurt or sour cream for a richer, creamy result.
Serving Suggestions
- Pair it with whatever you are grilling like yogurt marinated chicken or chimichurri chicken.
- Round out the meal with other summertime sides like grilled vegetables, corn on the cob, coleslaw and pasta salad.
- Pack it up to enjoy at a picnic along with Jennifer Aniston salad or cottage cheese egg salad.
- Add vegetables to meaty main dinners like chicken bites, garlic butter steak bites or sirloin tip steak.
How to Store
Cucumber salad is best served immediately because the cucumber becomes watery over time. Enjoy it the same day or better within 2-4 hours!
FAQs
Slice cucumbers, onion and dill, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 24 hours. Then add oil, vinegar, salt and pepper just before serving.
Salt draws out water, so you can refrigerate salad without salt and add right before serving. You can also remove seeds with a spoon before chopping the cucumber. If you notice water accumulates later on, just drain and enjoy!
More Cucumber Salad Recipes
- Creamy cucumber tomato salad
- Tomato cucumber bell pepper salad
- Cucumber tomato feta salad
- Cucumber tomato avocado salad
- Traditional Greek salad
Browse more than 50 healthy salad recipes!
Healthy Cucumber Salad
Ingredients
- 2 long English cucumbers, thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup red onion, thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup fresh dill, finely chopped
- 2 tablespoons olive oil, extra virgin
- 1 tablespoon white vinegar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
Instructions
- In a large bowl, add cucumbers, red onion, dill, olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.
- Stir well to mix.
- This salad is best served immediately because the cucumber becomes watery over time. But you can add all ingredients, minus salt and pepper, and refrigerate up to 24 hours. Season and stir before serving.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I had printed this recipe off and it was on my list to make. Well, today we came in late from fishing and I had to get the sides ready quickly. I made this and it was the perfect vegetable dish after a long day in the Florida summer heat. Thank you so very much for creating such healthy dishes for us to enjoy!
Sounds like it hit the spot! Hope you got to have some fresh fish with it 🙂
Bought ingredients to make it twice and boy, am I glad I did. SOOOOO good. 10 minutes? Olena, what??!!! More like 60 minutes with the washing, chopping, trimming the dill, etc. And mixing it is a huge chore because there’s so much and it’s heavy. I followed the basics but added a lot of sunflower seeds to the first batch 3 days ago and last night added the rest of my sunflower seed supply and a lot of pumpkin seeds, an avocado, 8 sliced radishes, two chopped steamed potatoes, and a fair amount of fresh chives. Both times I added a whole thing of dill minus the stems, of course. Chopped it good. Can’t overdo dill. The toasted sesame oil is killer!! I used 1t of balsamic in both batches. It’s good. The Ukrainian Salad is A HUGE WINNER, Olena!! And so are you!!!
Glad you enjoyed it and were able to adapt it for a few meals!
Hi Olena, you made my day! I sat down to eat my CUCUMBER SALAD for dinner and checked my email. I was intrigued by your daily digest and read the recipe. Surprise! There was my mother’s and my grandmother’s and probably her mother’s cucumber salad recipe, dill and all. Good old Swabian cuisine. Everything tastes better with a little vinaigrette.
P.S. This evening I went rogue and used lovage and shallot in place of dill and red onion. Super hearty.
And that makes our day! So glad you enjoyed the cucumber salad, so good in the summer!
I have been making this for years- think it originated in the Southern states (like Arkansas) – big hit! Only thing I do differently is to use ice cold water and vinegar – no oil. Lots of pepper!
Awesome, cucumber salad is so refreshing for the summer!
Easy and delicious, doesn’t get better than that for summertime!
Glad you enjoyed it!