This crunchy Cucumber Carrot Salad is the perfect side dish. Crisp and refreshing, with the perfect balance of sweet and sour.
Vibrant and tasty, this cucumber salad with carrots combines just a few ingredients into a dish you can serve with anything. Love it as a side for anything on the grill, and also fantastic with this Panko-Crusted Salmon, this No Wine Shrimp Scampi, or these Corn Tortilla Quesadillas. This cucumber dish is a refreshing summer favorite!
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Why Make This Recipe
- Great Texture: Love the tender crunch of those just slightly pickled carrots and cucumbers
- Unique: Not the same boring salad for your cucumbers and carrots!
- Make-in-Advance: This dish needs to chill for a couple of hours, so it’s great if you need to make something ahead of time for dinner or a potluck
🥗 Ingredients
- Cucumbers: I love the baby cucumbers you can sometimes find at your grocery store or farmers’ market with the very small seeds and the thin skin you don’t need to peel. English cucumbers (often packaged in plastic) are also great for this recipe. If you have regular cucumbers, either peel them entirely or at least peel some thick strips off the rind.
- Red Onion: You can leave this part of the recipe out if you are not an onion fan. You could also replace with thinly sliced shallots or scallions.
- Rice Vinegar: This recipe uses seasoned rice vinegar. If you have only unseasoned rice vinegar, just add another tablespoon of sugar and ½ teaspoon of kosher salt to ¼ cup of unseasoned rice vinegar.
- Sesame Seeds: I like to buy pre-toasted sesame seeds, but if you have only plain sesame seeds, toast them in a dry skillet until they are lightly browned.
🥣 Step-by-Step Instructions
Thinly slice 1 pound seedless cucumbers. Peel ½ pound carrots, and thinly slice. Put cucumbers and carrots into a colander and toss with 2 teaspoons salt.
Let sit and drain in the sink for 30 minutes. While cucumbers and carrots are draining, peel ½ red onion and slice into thin half-moons. Use paper towels or a clean kitchen towel to blot cucumbers and carrots dry and press out any excess liquid.
Pour carrots and cucumbers into a large bowl and stir in red onion slices. Then stir in ¼ cup rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon sugar, and 1 teaspoon sesame oil.
Cover and put in the refrigerator to chill for 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Stir in 2 tablespoons sesame seeds before serving.
🧐 Recipe FAQs for Cucumber Carrot Salad
Cucumbers have a ton of moisture in them. That is the reason this recipe calls for salting the cucumber slices and letting them drain. The salt leaches out liquid from the cucumbers, so that it doesn’t turn your salad soggy. Also, seedless cucumbers have less moisture in them than regular cucumbers. See below for what to do if your salad accumulates more liquid after sitting in the refrigerator for a while.
This recipe comes with its own Asian-inspired dressing. That said, the combination of cucumbers, carrots, and red onions goes with all kinds of dressings. Follow the recipe through the salting of the cucumber and carrots, but before adding the rice vinegar and other seasonings, try another dressing like this Healthy Ranch Dressing (for a creamy salad) or this Sumac Dressing, for a more Middle Eastern take on the flavor.
👩🍳 Expert Tips
This Carrot Cucumber Salad is best eaten the same day you make it but will keep for 1-2 days in the refrigerator. It will lose some of its crunch, but is still tasty.
Depending on how long the salad has been sitting in the refrigerator, it may have more or less liquid at the bottom of the bowl. If there is a lot of excess liquid, you can use a slotted spoon to serve, or drain the salad into a colander before putting into a serving bowl.
I like the round discs of cucumber and carrot in this salad, but you can grate the carrots instead. Or you could spiralize either the carrots or the cucumbers or both!
Feel free to play around with the flavors as well—add fresh herbs or throw in some red pepper flakes for spice. Chopped salty peanuts on top is a delicious addition as well.
This cucumber salad is also fantastic as a topping for a sandwich or a sub—think of it where you might use a pickle instead!
If you enjoy this vinegar-based dressing, you should also check out this Vinegar Coleslaw—a classic potluck recipe.
Love carrots? For your next recipe, why not try our Spiced Carrot and Red Lentil Soup or our Carrot Ginger Soup with Crème Fraîche?
Other Cucumber Recipes
We’re always looking for new and creative ways to use cucumbers throughout the summer. You can check out our Salads and Dressings Archive, or see some of our favorites below.
If you try this Cucumber and Carrot Salad recipe, I would love to hear from you! Please rate this recipe and leave a comment below—your feedback is invaluable to me.
And please follow along on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook or subscribe to my newsletter. I'd love to inspire you with more delicious, healthy, and seasonal recipes!
📖 Recipe
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Cucumber Carrot Salad
Ingredients
- 1 pound seedless cucumbers
- ½ pound carrots
- 2 teaspoons salt
- ½ red onion
- ¼ cup seasoned rice vinegar
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- 2 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds
Instructions
- Thinly slice cucumbers.
- Peel carrots, and thinly slice.
- Put cucumbers and carrots into a colander and toss with salt. Let sit and drain in the sink for 30 minutes.
- While cucumbers and carrots are draining, peel onion and slice into thin half-moons.
- After 30 minutes, use paper towels or a clean kitchen towel to blot cucumbers and carrots dry and press out any excess liquid.
- Pour carrots and cucumbers into a large bowl and stir in red onion slices.
- Then stir in vinegar, sugar, and sesame oil.
- Cover and put in the refrigerator to chill for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.
- Stir in sesame seeds before serving.
Notes
Nutrition
Instagram Users: Now that you've made this Cucumber Carrot Salad recipe, tag me @vanillabeancuisine or #vanillabeancuisine because I'd love to see your results!
More About Molly
Cooking healthy(ish) meals with seasonal ingredients is my passion. Trained as a French pastry chef, I spent over 10 years as a personal chef. Here you'll find well-tested recipes that you and your family will love!
Mimi Rippee says
I love the addition of carrots in this salad! I make a cucumber salad that’s similar but it also has Tabasco in it. Really good!