Indian Cucumber Salad

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This is one of my absolute favorite easy cucumber salads, full of spice and flavor that hits all the salty, sweet, sour, and spicy notes, including toasted coconut, peanuts, chili, and lime juice. You’ll be hooked on the first bite!

Here’s a simple cucumber salad that’s beyond ordinary. Inspired by cool and refreshing Indian-style cucumber salads — or kachumber salad — this recipe is super-tasty and intensely crave-able.

• Taste: By combining just a few spices (chili, cumin and black mustard seeds) plus fresh citrus, peanuts and grated unsweetened coconut, this salad comes to life in a big way.

My usual go-to salads with cucumber nod toward Mediterranean flavors. They’re most often a simple cucumber salad with ripe tomatoes and feta cheese.

But, this salad adds in spice and coconut, turning the flavor profile to South Asia. There’s the crunch of chopped roasted peanuts, the heat of chili pepper and nutty-tasting popped brown mustard seeds and cumin.

Best cucumbers for salad

• Persian cucumbers: These mini cucumbers have become my favorite variety. They are becoming more widely available in most grocery stores, and are great for snacking and all kinds of salad recipes. Also called “burpless” cucumber, they’re small and practically seedless, with a delicate skin that doesn’t need peeling.
• English cucumbers, also called Hothouse or seedless cucumbers are also great for this salad.

Depending on the size of your cucumber, the seeds will be more or less developed. If you think they’re too seedy, they’re easily scooped out with a spoon.

Serve this salad all by itself, or with a side of coconut rice.

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Indian Cucumber Salad

Karen Tedesco

Chopped cucumbers are spiced-up with cumin, toasted coconut, peanuts and fresh lime. It's lightly sweet, salty, sour and so good! It's full of spice and flavor that hits all the salty, sweet, sour, and spicy notes. You'll be hooked on the first bite!

Print SaveSaved

4.91 from 66 ratings

Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Total Time 10 minutes mins

Course Salad

Cuisine Vegetarian

Servings 4 servings

Cook ModePrevent your screen from going dark

Ingredients

• ▢ 5 Persian cucumbers, or 1 large English seedless cucumber, sliced into 1/2-inch chunks
• ▢ 1 tablespoon (15 g) finely chopped serrano, or jalapeno chili pepper
• ▢ ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper
• ▢ ½ cup (73 g) roasted unsalted peanuts, finely chopped or pulsed in a food processor
• ▢ ¼ cup (25 g) unsweetened shredded coconut
• ▢ 2 tablespoons (30 ml) fresh lime or lemon juice, or a mixture of both
• ▢ 2 teaspoons sugar
• ▢ Fine sea salt
• ▢ 2 tablespoons (30 ml) coconut oil, ghee or neutral vegetable oil
• ▢ ½ teaspoons brown mustard seeds, optional
• ▢ ½ teaspoon cumin seeds
• ▢ Chopped fresh cilantro or mint

US Customary – Metric

Instructions 

• Put the cucumber, chili pepper, red pepper flakes, ¼ cup of the peanuts, 2 tablespoons of the coconut, lime juice, sugar and 1 teaspoon salt in a large bowl. Toss gently.
• Heat the oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add the mustard seeds. When they start to sizzle and pop, stir in the cumin and remaining 2 tablespoons coconut. Turn off the heat.
• Pour the mustard seed mixture over the cucumbers and toss everything together (it will sizzle). Taste to make sure the salad has a good balance of salty-sweet-hot adding more salt, sugar, chili or citrus to taste.
• Serve in bowls sprinkled with the remaining peanuts and cilantro or mint.

Karen’s Notes and Tips

•  The best way to slice cucumber is to cut them into chunky, bite-size pieces (so they don’t become too soggy) First halve them lengthwise. If you’re using anything other than a Persian cucumber, remove the seeds by running a spoon down the middle. Slice each half in half again, then slice crosswise into 1/4-inch pieces.
• Mix the salad shortly before serving so it doesn’t become watery.
• If you can’t find brown mustard seeds, simply omit them.

Recipe adapted from How to Cook Indian.

Nutrition per serving

Calories: 272kcal Carbohydrates: 22g Protein: 7g Fat: 20g Sodium: 15mg Fiber: 5g Sugar: 10g

Nutrition facts are calculated by third-party software. If you have specific dietary needs, please refer to your favorite calculator.

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• Salad
• Vegetables
• Vegetarian and Vegan

Hey, I’m Karen

Creator of Familystyle Food

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I’m a food obsessed super-taster and professionally trained cook ALL about creating elevated dinners with everyday ingredients. Find simplified recipes made from scratch and enjoy incredibly tasty food! Read more about me here.