Cucumber Salad with Sour Cream

Few summer vegetables are as refreshing and hydrating as cucumbers. Cool and crunchy, they’re popular in many side salad recipes, including this creamy cucumber salad with sour cream. It is a classic among summer salads, but one you can enjoy all year. Whether using fresh-from-the-garden cukes or ones plucked from the produce aisle, cucumbers sliced and combined with onions, vinegar and sour cream are one of life’s great pleasures.

Like many healthy cucumber recipes, the creamy cucumber salad can be made easily and quickly with just about any type of cucumber, including English cucumbers or homegrown slicing and pickling varieties. Sour cream cucumbers are wonderful alongside everything from goulash to this potato kielbasa skillet, but we’ve been known to eat this creamy cucumber salad with sour cream on its own just because it tastes that good.

Ingredients for Cucumber Salad with Sour Cream

• Cucumbers: All cucumber varieties work in this recipe, but you’ll probably want to peel ones with thick, waxy skin like American slicing cucumbers. Thinner-skinned English, Armenian and Kirby pickling cucumbers can be left unpeeled, giving the slices more structure and boosting the salad with shades of green.
• Onion: Vidalia and other sweet onion varieties have a mild flavor and less bite than other types of onions. A pale white and yellow onion also works in this salad; it will have a stronger taste, but the dressing will mellow its bite. A red onion will turn the dressing a faint pink.
• Sour cream: Sour cream may look too thick for a dressing as you scoop it from the container, but it thins quickly when mixed with the vinegar and even more so as it coats the water-heavy cucumbers and onion. Full-fat sour cream makes the creamiest dressing, but reduced-fat or fat-free sour cream works too.
• Vinegar: White vinegar has no flavor; it’s just zing. Of all the types of vinegar, some cooks argue that white vinegar works best for salad dressings and pickles because it’s so neutral. For a slightly sweeter taste, replace it with apple cider vinegar. Choose white wine vinegar as a more mellow option or rice vinegar as a less acidic one.
• Sugar: A scant amount of sugar helps mitigate the bites of vinegar and raw onion. You can cut down or omit the sugar if needed, but it’s worth having that balance.

Directions

Step 1: Mix the salad

In a large bowl, whisk the sour cream, vinegar, sugar and pepper until the sugar has dissolved and the ingredients have blended smoothly. Add the cucumber and onion slices, and toss to coat.

Editor’s Tip: For the crispest vegetables, before adding them to the salad, toss the cucumber and onion slices with 1 to 2 teaspoons salt and let them sit for 30 minutes. Gently squeeze the slices to remove moisture and salt. Rinse the vegetables and squeeze them again for even less salt in the final recipe.

Step 2: Refrigerate and serve

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Cover the bowl and refrigerate the salad for at least four hours. Serve the salad with a slotted spoon or tongs, letting the excess dressing drain into the bowl. Grind more pepper over each serving to taste.

Recipe Variations

• Use yogurt: If you’re rich in cucumbers but out of sour cream, stir the same amount of unflavored yogurt into the dressing instead. Greek yogurt most closely matches sour cream in thickness and tanginess; plain yogurt is a bit thinner. Creme fraiche is another great substitute for sour cream.
• Make it vegan: Today’s lineup of dairy-free foods makes it easy to create a vegan version of this salad using dairy-free sour cream or yogurt. For a lighter pickled salad, skip the sour cream and mix the vinegar with 3 tablespoons water to reduce its bite.
• Add herbs: Dill pickles are so popular because dill is a perfect match for cucumbers, but other herbs, including chives, parsley, mint and tarragon, can be tasty too. Fresh minced herbs release the strongest flavor; add 1 tablespoon to start (or 1 teaspoon dried herbs, according to the fresh-to-dried herb conversion) and then adjust the amount in the next batch to suit your tastes. To make a simple dairy-free cucumber salad with dill, mix 3/4 cup white vinegar, 1/3 cup snipped fresh dill, 1/3 cup sugar and 3/4 teaspoon pepper together, then stir in the cucumbers and serve.
• Make it spicy: Hot paprika, dried chile flakes or minced fresh chiles, a jalapeno or a hot cherry pepper will infuse the salad with heat as it sits. For more complex spiciness, spike the dressing with a few dashes of your favorite hot sauce (or one of our test kitchen’s best hot sauce brands). For extra zing without heat, stir in a clove of minced garlic or a little freshly grated ginger and a splash of lemon or lime juice.

How to Store Cucumber Salad with Sour Cream

Leftover creamy cucumber salad should be returned to the refrigerator within two hours (or one hour if temperatures climb above 90°F) to prevent the sour cream from spoiling. The salad will become runny while it is stored. For the best texture, refrigerate it in an airtight container for no more than four days. Extra liquid can be drained away before you serve the salad again.

Can you make cucumber salad with sour cream ahead of time?

Refrigerating creamy cucumber salad with sour cream for four hours turns the thick sour cream into a light dressing that coats the vegetables, but letting it chill longer makes the dressing so watery that it sloughs off the cucumbers. If you want to make this salad ahead of time, plan to serve it within one to three days, and serve it cold from the refrigerator for the best flavor and texture.

Cucumber Salad with Sour Cream Tips

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How do you make sure this sour cream cucumber salad isn’t too watery?

To ensure your cucumber salad with sour cream isn’t too watery, slice and salt the cucumbers and onions before mixing them with the sour cream and vinegar. Pickling cucumbers hold slightly less water than slicing ones, so choosing these can also help reduce the salad’s wateriness.

Do you need to peel the cucumbers for sour cream cucumber salad?

You don’t need to peel the cucumbers for this salad, but you might want to if they have thick, waxy skin like American cucumbers. This large, dark green type is the most common and affordable variety, and often just labeled “cucumber” at the grocery store. American cucumbers are almost always waxed before shipping to keep them fresh and undamaged, so if you decide to leave the peel on, give the cucumbers a good scrub before you slice them. If there’s a bitter cucumber taste, peeling off the skin may reduce it.

What do you serve with creamy cucumber salad?

This salad’s combination of tangy, sweet and creamy sits well alongside many main dishes. Serve cucumber salad with Key West flank steak, grilled mahi mahi or other healthy grilled dinners. If you add dill to the salad, serve it alongside salmon. The creamy cucumbers also make a tasty topping or filling. Spread them on a tomato sandwich, tuck them with falafel or gyro meat into pita bread as a stand-in for tzatziki sauce, or chop them coarsely and pile them in a baked potato.