For More Flavorful Cucumber Salad, Make It German-Style

Traditional cucumber salad can be bland and not the first dish guests are piling onto their plates at backyard parties and potlucks. This is largely due to this veggie's high water content, which can dilute the flavor and the creamy dressing used to create it. Enter German-style cucumber salad. Called gurkensalat in German, it uses sour cream, vinegar, and fresh dill to create a sweet and tangy bite with each forkful. 

How is this different from a typical cucumber salad? Most recipes lean into slicing the cucumbers and dressing them up with a thick mayo, sour cream, or yogurt-based dressing. But the German-style is dedicated to developing layers of flavor, not just through added herbs and vinegar, but also through a crucial step that Ina Garten uses when she makes her cucumber salad, which counteracts that watery taste. 

You want to salt the slices of cucumber and red onion (which also features in German-style cucumber salad) and allow them to sit in a colander for as little as 10 minutes if you are in a hurry, or as much as 4 hours or overnight. This might seem like a time-consuming step, but it draws out all that excess moisture from these key players before you start mixing up a dressing, completely transforming the flavor profile. If you are able to plan ahead, it's totally worth it and also brings out the natural sweet and bitter notes of the cucumber.

Once you've drained the cucumbers and onions to remove as much moisture as possible, marinate your cucumber salad in its dressing before serving. This is the best trick for the most flavorful cucumber salad every time. A German-style cucumber salad needs to chill in the fridge for a minimum of about 4 hours so it can soak up the flavors from the herbs, vinegar, and tangy creaminess of the sour cream that are synonymous with it. But there is one other key difference with this salad that makes it a standout: The way you slice the cucumbers makes the dish. 

For German-style cucumber salad, you want them to be paper-thin, which completely changes the texture and cucumber-to-dressing ratio. So, get out your mandoline, an essential kitchen tool, and set it to the width of your choosing. You can use any type of cucumber you want, but English cucumbers are ideal because you are less likely to encounter bitter-tasting seeds. However, if the seeds taste bitter, try cutting them lengthwise and removing them. You can then create ribbons of cucumber for your German-style cucumber salad so it looks as good as it tastes.