Easy Cucumber Salad With Yogurt, Poppy Seed Dressing. I don’t feel like cooking every night. Gasp. I know. I write a food blog, right? I want to cook every minute of every day!
This Cucumber Salad With Yogurt, Poppy Seed Dressing comes from those kinds of nights. It’s also sort of nostalgic for me. Cucumber salad always brings me back to my parent’s kitchen table in the summertime.
Windows open, breeze coming in through the screened-in porch, peepers just starting their racket from the pond across the street. And cucumber salad. I don’t remember (sorry, mom) if we ate cucumber salad with a yogurt dressing or not, but I do remember complaining that it wasn’t right when there were no poppy seeds and devouring three servings of it in one sitting.
This kind of easy summer salad works with any entree you serve next to it. This Easy Cucumber Salad With Yogurt, Poppy Seed Dressing is crisp, light, and colorful, and if you are one of those “I’ll eat salad, but no lettuce, please” folks, this is for you.
You can serve Cucumber Salad With Yogurt, Poppy Seed Dressing with meatloaf, chicken tikka masala, ribs, and with chickpeas, and naan. Really. It goes with anything. And if you didn’t gather from my schpeel about not-feeling-it-cooking-nights, cucumber salad is easy.
I make a lot of homemade dressings. *Cue Dos Equis guy voice* I don’t always make creamy dressings. But when I do, I use yogurt. And it’s perfect with cucumber salad.
Jokes and voice-overs aside, I love using plain Greek yogurt in dressings. It’s an amazing base for every flavor profile I’ve ever wanted to play with. It’s a neutral color and flavor with just enough tartness and an almost-perfect consistency
Lemon juice and cold water are usual additions and then play with any number of other ingredients (Sriracha, soy sauce, smoked paprika, herbs, or in this case, poppy seeds). I make a spicy, Mexican-style crema and this lemony tzatziki at least a couple of times a month. In fact, I make so many versions of Greek yogurt dressing I am thinking about making a short video tutorial on how to make a few of them. What do you think?
Easy Cucumber Salad With Yogurt, Poppy Seed Dressing
Ingredients
- 2 large English cucumbers halved, seeded, sliced into half moons
- ½ cup red onion sliced thinly
- 1 tablespoon salt
- ½ cup Greek yogurt plain
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice fresh
- 1 teaspoon honey
- 1 teaspoon poppy seeds
- ½ teaspoon dried dill or 1 teaspoon fresh dill
- 1 pinch Kosher salt
- 1 pinch ground black pepper
- 1 tablespoon water cold, add more if needed
Instructions
- Place cucumbers in a colander over the sink. Toss with 1 tablespoon of salt. Let drain for 15 minutes. Rinse with cold water and pat dry.
- In a large bowl, combine yogurt, lemon juice, honey, poppy seeds, dill, salt, and pepper until smooth. Add water to loosen the dressing if needed (you want the dressing to be thick enough to coat a spoon but loose enough that it doesn’t glob on).
- Add cucumbers and red onion. Toss gently to combine.
- Refrigerate until ready to eat.