Sunomono — The Cucumber Salad That Isn't Creamy

The cucumber salad going around American kitchens lately is usually a creamy one — sliced thin, dressed, eaten straight from the bowl. The Japanese one on the dinner table is not. Vinegar, a little sugar, something salty, a squeeze of the cucumbers, and it is finished. It is called sunomono, which means, plainly, “the vinegared thing.”

It exists to sit beside something richer — grilled fish, anything fried — and to reset your mouth between bites. That is why it is sour before it is sweet, and why the portion is small. No stove, one bowl, and the only technique is squeezing the water out of the cucumber, which is what keeps the dressing tasting like dressing instead of water.

At our table it is almost never cucumber on its own. Wakame goes in with it — you will find it in the ingredients below rather than as an afterthought — and something goes on top for color: tomato on one dish, imitation crab on the other.

Serves 4 as a side · About 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 Japanese or Persian cucumbers, about 200g total
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp dried wakame
• 2 Tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp shiro-dashi
• 1 tsp soy sauce — or 2 tsp soy sauce in total, if you have no shiro-dashi
• To finish: a few pieces of tomato, or imitation crab (which contains fish, and often wheat and egg)

We measure with a 15 ml tablespoon and a 5 ml teaspoon.

How to make it

1. Slice the cucumbers thinly — about 2 mm thick.
2. Salt them, and soak the wakame. Toss the cucumbers with the salt in a bowl and leave them for 10 minutes; they will slump, and a pool will collect underneath. While they sit, cover the dried wakame with cold water and leave it until soft, about 5 minutes.

3. Squeeze. Take the cucumbers in both hands and press the water out firmly, then discard the liquid. Squeeze the soaked wakame the same way. This is the step that matters most — undersqueezed cucumbers water down the dressing within minutes.

4. Dress them together. Stir the vinegar, sugar, shiro-dashi and soy sauce together until the sugar dissolves, then pour it over the cucumbers and the wakame and toss gently. The wakame goes in now, not at the end — it carries no flavor of its own, so it needs the time in the dressing.

5. Chill, then top it. Refrigerate for 5 minutes before serving. Add the tomato or the crab at the last moment — both bring their own salt and their own color, and neither needs to sit in the dressing.

Tip

The dressing is the classic three-part balance — vinegar, sugar, and something salty — so it takes additions easily. A few threads of ginger sharpen it; a handful of small cooked shrimp turns it into a first course. It keeps a day in the refrigerator, though it loosens as it sits, so drain it before it goes out again. And the vinegar is the one thing worth being fussy about here: with this few ingredients, a harsh vinegar has nowhere to hide.

This one came to the table at lunch, beside okra dressed in dashi and a cold tomato and shiso pasta.

One of five in our No Stove collection — for the days too hot to cook.

From our Pantry

Chidori-su Rice Vinegar

Brewed in Kyoto since 1893, and mellow enough to taste from the spoon — which is exactly what a dish of three ingredients asks for.

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Uneno Shiro Dashi

One teaspoon carries the salt and the dashi at once — the quiet reason a Japanese cucumber salad tastes like more than vinegar.

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Continue

Where Sake Ends, Vinegar Begins

the two spoonfuls, and the century behind them.

Types of Japanese Rice Vinegar

junmai, kurozu, seasoned — which bottle does what.

Kombu vs. Wakame vs. Nori

three seaweeds that are not interchangeable.