German Cucumber Salad Recipe

Looking for a tasty salad or just something with reliable quality? Check out this German salad recipe that proudly stands with the family!

We’ve may already know about the importance of first impressions. If nothing else then the constant nagging of our parents or grandparents about the importance of combing our hair, polishing our shoes or the ironing our attire must have had some long-lasting imprint on our mind.

Thanks to such care, love, and annoying persistency that one can only wield once become a parent, many of us have developed the ability to craft the best of ourselves when plunging into the general society to meet other human beings.

Things get even more intense when the meeting has a special importance to us, and the people’s opinion matters much more. We may not mind offending our fellow commuters once or twice with our non-matching bag and shoes but few of us would take such high risks on an interview or a date, except if we want to make a statement, of course.

Prejudices are useful, yet sometimes unhelpful or even destructive built-in part of our human nature. Unfortunately, it’s not that something we, as thinking beings, have much control over, since this is how our body is wired and operates on a biochemical level.

Our brain uses prejudices similarly as computer programmers use repetitions, to save energy by not bothering to re-learn things all the time but reusing already known situations. This behavior was not just useful to teach us when to eat which fruit but also helps us save time by nudging us into lines with no families with multiple kids or people who visibly whizzed pass retirement.

Interestingly that we are aware of such behavior, it doesn’t mean that we can change anything about it.

We can accept it, understand it and can plan things ahead to avoid it but once we are presented with situations, we’ve already experienced, our decisions are not made independently of the actual situation but by feeding on previous experiences skewing our judgement.

We can fight but apart from being aware, we can’t really do much about it. Most of the time, the first impression that we make at a job interview, or any other social situation, is the first and final impression what we have.

Once that idea about someone is born, our brain will spend the rest of its time reinforcing the same idea, cherry picking bits of conversation to justify the so-called gut feeling that we experienced in the first couple of seconds of our meeting.

Having a good first impression is hence paramount not just when we want to impress someone but at every social situation with long lasting, unintended consequences across many aspects of life from buying cool three striped sport equipment through our first “Auto” or as simple thing as Cucumber salad named after a nation.

German cucumber salad is nothing more than how Germans like their cucumbers made into salad. Of course, probably not all of them but plenty is enough so we can build such harmless prejudices and name a dish after them.

Sure, calling something like that may not help much if our first impression of German food was a bit too sour, sauerkraut right out of the jar but few people have ever complained about hamburgers and Hamburg is a city in Germany.

German cucumber salad is nothing like sauerkraut or hamburgers though. It’s made of very basic ingredients that can be easily sourced and turn cucumber into a something much better that it can be on its own.

The main protagonist of the show will be dill that makes many other sauces or dishes exciting, like the ranch dressing, tzatziki sauce, cauliflower potato salad or falafel but for helping it to shine trury through the dish, we need to add a bit of vinegar and salt.

Garlic and sour cream may sound like an overkill, and many find them unattractive for one reason or the other but most of the time both of them are used to settle German cucumber salad at a permanent spot in people’s hearts.

Ingredients

3 medium / 750g Cucumber
2 cloves / 6g Garlic
1 teaspoon / 3g Dill
1 teaspoon / 5g Salt
1 teaspoon / 5ml Vinegar
2 tablespoons / 30ml Sour cream
1 teaspoon / 2g Paprika

How to make German cucumber salad

Peeling cucumber is not necessary but sometimes the skin a bit tough. Removing the upper layer or some of the skin will create a bit more exciting texture and stripy look.
Slice up the cucumbers.
Chop the garlic and fresh dill finely.
In a big enough bowl mix cucumber, garlic, dill, salt and vinegar.
Let it sit in the fridge for at least 30 minutes so the flavors can come together. For best results, it needs a day.
As not everybody likes sour cream, not to mention people with dairy allergy, keep sour cream only for those who like it. A bit of paprika for decoration or a bit more for additional flavor may come handy.

Enjoy!

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