This Creamy Dill Cucumber Salad Has a Smart Secret

America’s Take a look at Kitchen is famously recognized for going the additional mile to make the most effective model of traditional recipes — and their creamy cucumber salad isn’t any exception. Whereas many recipes name for salting and draining the cucumbers, ATK takes it a few steps additional by first seeding the cucumbers after which weighting the salted cucumbers down in a colander with a water-filled, gallon-sized zip-top bag. They declare this step removes extra water than salting alone, making a salad with particularly good crunch. I needed to know: Is it value the additional effort? Right here’s what occurred after I received within the kitchen to attempt it out.

Regardless of the additional steps of seeding the cucumbers and filling a big zip-top bag with water, this recipe is super-straightforward and straightforward. You’ll prep the cucumbers by peeling them, slicing them in half lengthwise, scooping out all of the seeds, then slicing them on a diagonal into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Add the cucumber slices and thinly sliced crimson onion to a colander set in a big bowl and toss with salt. Fill a gallon-sized zip-top bag with water and place on prime of the cucumbers. Drain the cucumbers for at the least one hour, or as much as three.

Whisk collectively bitter cream, vinegar, sugar, and dill, and season with salt and pepper. Add the cucumbers and onions and stir to coat. Serve chilled.

I do know seems to be aren’t every little thing in terms of meals, however I used to be immediately smitten with the looks of this salad. Merely slicing the cucumbers into one thing apart from half moons made this salad really feel extra enjoyable and even just a little bit fancy. I’ll undoubtedly take this method once more with different cucumber salads.

Now onto the flavour. I’ll begin by saying this salad definitely lives as much as its identify. With bitter cream as the bottom, the dressing is thick and extremely creamy, with a tang that stored me coming again for extra. It’s additionally full of a beneficiant quantity of contemporary dill.

My major qualm with this salad is that it skewed just a little salty for me — and I are likely to have a heavy hand with salt — however I’ll take partial accountability. The recipe instructs you so as to add an unspecified quantity of extra salt when whisking collectively the dressing. The perfect method right here, because the cucumbers have already been salted, would have been to combine the dressing with the cucumbers and style to evaluate if extra salt was truly obligatory. As an alternative, I whisked in 1/2 teaspoon salt (an quantity comparable with different recipes) with the dressing. Whereas the salad was nonetheless good, it was saltier than I might have favored.

Lastly, whiIe I favored the thought of utilizing a water-filled bag to take away extra water, I wouldn’t use this method once more. I didn’t discover the outcomes to be considerably completely different from different recipes that salt and drain cucumbers with out a weight.

Have you ever tried America’s Take a look at Kitchen’s Creamy Cucumber Salad? Tell us within the feedback!