Today’s side dish is a tangy seaweed and cucumber salad. You could really just call it a Korean-style salad.
Korea reportedly eats more seaweed than any other country in the world, and there’s a cultural reason behind that.
We eat seaweed soup on birthdays, and new moms eat it often during postpartum recovery too.
Because of that, dried seaweed is easy to find at any Korean grocery store. Once you buy a bag, it keeps for a long time and works well in all kinds of side dishes.
Seaweed comes both dried and fresh, and this recipe uses the dried kind.
All you really do is blanch the seaweed briefly, then toss it with the seasoning. It’s a simple side dish.
In Korea, this is the kind of dish people tend to make in spring or summer when the weather heats up.
Since it’s made with cucumber, it turns out tangy and refreshing, which makes it perfect for waking up your appetite on days when you’re not feeling very hungry.
Here’s what you’ll need.
Ingredients
◽ Dried seaweed – about half of a standard paper cup (180 ml)
◽ 1/2 cucumber
◽ 1/3 onion
◽ 1/2 tablespoon minced garlic
◽ 2 Korean green chili peppers (cheongyang peppers), or bell peppers
◽ 1/2 tablespoon fish sauce
◽ 6 tablespoons vinegar
◽ 3 tablespoons allulose
◽ 1/2 teaspoon salt
◽ 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
Tools
◽ Pot
◽ Cutting board
◽ Knife
◽ Strainer
◽ Mixing bowl
◽ Small dish
◽ Teaspoon
◽ Disposable gloves
I used pre-cut dried seaweed. If yours comes in whole pieces, soak it first, then cut it into bite-sized pieces with kitchen scissors.
Put the seaweed in a bowl and add enough water to fully submerge it. Let it soak for 15 to 20 minutes.
Soaking dried seaweed brings it back to its original texture, closer to how it was before it was dried.
While the seaweed is soaking, prep the cucumber. You’ll only need about half of one
Use a peeler to lightly remove the bumpy, rough parts on the outside of the cucumber.
Cut the cucumber in half lengthwise, then scoop out the seeds. Removing the seeds cuts down on excess water and helps keep the texture nice and crisp.
A small teaspoon works great for scraping out the seeds from the center.
Once the seeds are out, slice the cucumber into pieces about 0.5 mm thick. You can cut it straight across, though I like to cut mine on a diagonal.
Next, salt the cucumber. Put the slices in a bowl, add 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and mix well. Let it sit for 15 minutes.
This draws moisture out of the cucumber and helps it pair better with the seaweed.
To recap: soak the seaweed in water for 15 minutes, and salt the cucumber for 15 minutes.
Now cut the onion. Slice it thin, into bite-sized pieces.
If you want to tone down the onion’s sharpness, soak it in cold water for about 15 minutes before using it. That helps mellow out the bite.
Once the seaweed has soaked for about 15 minutes, rinse it under cold running water two to three times.
Then blanch the rinsed seaweed in boiling water. Make sure the water is fully boiling before adding it in.
Don’t overcook it. You just want a quick blanch, about 1 minute, and that’s it.
Rinse the blanched seaweed again under cold running water until it cools all the way down.
This dish is meant to be eaten cold, like a salad, so it’s important to cool the seaweed completely.
Once it’s cooled, squeeze out the excess water with your hands.
Add the squeezed seaweed to a bowl, along with the cucumber. Since the cucumber was salted earlier, it will have released some liquid too, so squeeze that out by hand as well before adding it in.
With the seaweed and cucumber in the bowl, add in the sliced onion and chili peppers.
I like things spicy, so I used Korean green chili peppers (cheongyang peppers). If spice isn’t your thing, bell peppers work nicely here instead.
Now that everything is in the bowl, it’s time to make the sauce.
Here’s the sauce recipe:
1/2 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 tablespoon fish sauce (optional, feel free to skip it)
6 tablespoons vinegar
3 tablespoons sugar or allulose
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
Pour the sauce over everything, put on some disposable gloves, and gently toss it all together by hand. Go easy with it. Tossing too hard can make everything turn mushy.
Once it’s mixed, taste a bite of the seaweed. If it needs more tang, add another tablespoon of vinegar. If it’s too tangy, balance it out with an extra tablespoon of sugar or allulose.
And there you have it: a sweet, tangy seaweed and cucumber salad.
This is the kind of side dish that’ll have you going back for seconds of rice.
Hope you have a wonderful meal. Thank you! 🙂
