Cucumber, Tomato, and Onion Salad

[Music] this is the time of the year that I'm going to make something that's sort of traditional but with a little bit of a Twist it's a cucumber tomato and onion salad now if you're familiar with the green bean salad or sliced cucumbers in kind of a sweet sour mix then this will bring in a little bit of a new twist to that I'm starting with one large onion now this onion I put in sliced a little bit thick a four and inch to a third of an inch thick uh you could do it in wedges as well you could just chop it and I've let it soak in salt water a teaspoon of kosher salt to a couple of cups of water uh for about 20 minutes now the objective to that is to take away some of the really strong flavors that the onion might have if you've got a really sweet onion that you could just bite like an apple then I'd skip this step because we're not really not trying to soften it at all we're just trying to take out some of the snap that might be there otherwise so a yellow onion a white onion I definitely do uh that kind of a step with that we're going to put those in a large bowl that we have plenty of room in because we're going to add some other things to it and we're going to be doing some stirring and for that I always need a large bowl otherwise things are coming out all right also to that I'm going to add the the Cucumber now the types of cucumber there are about three kinds of cucumbers that you're going to come across in the the market either the supermarket uh maybe in your garden as well or at the farmers market uh this one is the one that I'm going to use today you could use any of the three this is a pickling cucumber this one is a slicing cucumber it's a little bit larger you'll notice that on the pickling cucumber there are more little nodules or uh some people would call them warts or uh Pricks when you're actually picking the Cucumber those will be a little bit sharp so there are going to be more of those on the pickling cucumber than on the slicing cucumber there will still be some here just not as many and if you wash this cucumber or handle it very much those are going to come off so by the time you get to the Cucumber that may not be your your best clue uh another thing that's going to be different is the coloring notice that on the slicing cucumber it's green all the way up and down pretty much uniform but on the pickling cucumbers there's a lot of variations and that's another clue that you've got a pickling cucumber now if you are actually pickling it makes a big difference in the kind of quality that you're going to get if you're making this salad it really doesn't matter you can use any any of them including this one uh which is sometimes called an English cucumber or a seedless cucumber or sometimes a burpless cucumber I don't really think that any of them are actually burpless and they're not actually seedless either but the seeds are smaller and people who respond to eating cucumbers by burping tend to do so less when they eat this kind of a cucumber so that one may be your choice as well this kind of cucumber the English cucumber has a very thin skin and so if you go to the supermarket to buy one to protect it and to keep some of the freshness inside of it it's usually going to be wrapped in plastic a slicing cucumber at the grocery store is usually going to be waxed the wax is perfectly safe to to eat it keeps the moisture inside it keeps it from deteriorating as quickly but you can't use it for pickling because it's just not going to absorb through that wax so we've got uh four of those that size cucumber it's a little over two somewhere with two to three cups of cucumber uh for the pickling cucumbers it was four of them I've sliced them notice they're again a little bit thicker we want to get a a good strong bite full when we go there uh break them apart because we're going to put a a marinade on them and we want to make sure that it gets to all of them and they do tend to stick together a little bit otherwise now the next ingredient is tomato now I've got three beautiful garden Tomatoes here that you could either cut in wedges I cut them in kind of wedges and cut the wedges in half they don't need to be seated it's going to be in a marinade if things fall into the marinade that's perfectly fine uh the caution on only caution on this is to when you add them and that's if they're extremely ripe add them at the very last minute because you don't want them to get too mushy now the next thing we've got going on is we're going to sprinkle a little bit I've got about a half a teaspoon of black pepper and a half a teaspoon of coer salt and we're going to sprinkle those over and just stir them a little bit we're not going to leave them sit very long we're not really trying to dry out juices we're just doing what that what I said we're just seasoning them so uh don't make a lot of effort at that point now we need to make our our uh actual marinade and for that I've got 34 of a cup of cider vinegar cider vinegar is great for this it's probably the tra traditional flavor of vinegar for it but if you choose another vinegar that's fine uh consider those that are dark red may have some impact on the color so a red wine vinegar a balsamic vinegar maybe too sweet uh but they are going to impact the color of the onions and the color of the Cucumbers uh but a distilled vinegar if that's what you have a champagne vinegar again whatever you've got to that I'm going to add another half a teaspoon of salt another half a teaspoon of black pepper 34 of a cup of sugar and this is going to give us that sweet sour effect that a lot of us just really really enjoy so whisk those together basically you're just trying to get the sugar dissolved at this point and then to that I'm going to add 2 tbspoon of canola oil you could use uh extra virgin olive oil canola oil uh again whatever oil you have present one of the advantages of using either the canola or the extra virgin olive oil is that is higher in mono unsaturated fats so from that standpoint it gives you a little bit better nutrition profile and a little bit he healthier dish in the end remember we're just dissolving the sugar pouring this over the top now we want those flavors to blend and that's going to take some time so if you were at home and doing this you'd stir This Together break all the onion into different into rings and uh make sure that everything is somewhat submerged come back and stir it once in a while but you want that to go into the refrigerator covered so that everything else in your refrigerator doesn't start to taste like this same salad particularly those mild things that you might have in there like peaches or other fresh fruit that may have become ripe and need to be stored in your refrigerator those are needs to sit in the refrigerator about 30 minutes it can sit longer if it's going to if you know it's going to sit longer I would make it up this far say in the morning and when you got home from work I'd add the tomatoes at that point to it and then maybe let it sit about 30 minutes beyond that when you're ready to serve get about a tablespoon of fresh parsley that you chopped quite finely and stir that in there as well and that's all there is to it it's really flavorful it's nice and sweet uh it's got that sweet sour thing going for it that uh maybe I think everyone else likes it so well simply because I do uh and when you're ready to serve remember this would have sat for a while and you would have broken the onions AP a little bit better just going to scoop up big scoops of it either into a bowl if you actually want to have some of that marinade or onto a plate and you've got a great salad in a fairly short length of time a little bit stand time in between but the time that it takes you to do it is not all that much I hope you'll give this one a try this is cucumber tomato and onion salad for okoma gardening I'm Barbara [Music] Brown [Music] n

Channel: OklahomaGardening

Views: 544,927

Keywords: osu, oklahoma, oklahoma state university, extension, research, teaching, agriculture, oklahoma gardening, cooking, food, salad, nutrition, healthy, cucumber, tomato, onion, sweet tangy salad, salad dressing, cucumber varieties, pickling, pickling cucumbers, barbara brown, 3915, Cooking with Barbara Brown

Id: 941CVJG_6_I

Length: 7min 46sec (466 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 18 2012