This cucumber salad goes well with the Campodonico Family’s recipe for Hungarian Chicken Paprikash. Read more recipes from the Wildwood Family Cookbook here. Bon Appetit!
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The Campodonico Family’s Hungarian Cucumber Salad (Uborkasaláta)
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 4 servings 1x
Description
This cucumber salad goes well with the Campodonico Family’s recipe for Hungarian Chicken Paprikash. Read more recipes from…
Ingredients
- 2 large English cucumbers
- 1 cup (240 ml) water
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 3 tbsp (45 ml) 10% white vinegar
- sweet paprika powder (to sprinkle)
- ground black pepper (to sprinkle)
- Salt
Instructions
- Slice cucumbers with mandolin. *Optional: peel first.
- Season with Salt and spread thin in Pyrex or wide bowl.
- Let sit for about 30 min for salt to draw out some moisture.
- Take handfuls off cucumbers and squeeze out the remaining liquid. Put cucumbers on fresh bowl and discard liquid.
- In separate bowl, combine water, sugar and vinegar and stir until sugar dissolves. *Optional: 1 clove minced garlic.
- Add this mixture to the bowl of cucumbers and stir to cover.
- Sprinkle pepper and paprika to garnish.
- Best when served cold!
- Tip:
Some Hungarians mix some sour cream into this recipe. We prefer the salad without it and as a light side to, what usually is, a hefty main…that often already includes a dash or more of sour cream!
The key: Make sure your cucumbers are sliced as thin as possible. Carefully use a mandolin on the slimmest setting
- Prep Time: 40 minutes
- Cook Time: 0 minutes
- Category: Salad
- Cuisine: Eastern European
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 serving
- Calories: 40
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do the cucumbers need to be salted and sit for 30 minutes before the dressing is added?
Spreading the thinly sliced cucumbers with salt and letting them rest for about 30 minutes draws excess moisture out of the flesh through osmosis. The instructions then have you squeeze the cucumbers by the handful to remove that liquid before adding the dressing — without this step, the released water would dilute the vinegar-and-sugar brine and leave the salad watery.
Why does this recipe call for a mandoline rather than a knife?
The recipe tip specifically states to slice the cucumbers “as thin as possible” on the slimmest mandoline setting, because paper-thin slices absorb the brine quickly and create the characteristic silky texture of Uborkasaláta — the family notes “you won’t appreciate the manual labor now but you will when you eat them.”
Does this salad include sour cream, the way some Hungarian versions do?
This family’s version does not use sour cream. The tip explains their preference: they serve Uborkasaláta as a light side to the heavy Chicken Paprikash (which already contains sour cream), so they keep the salad in a clean water-vinegar-sugar brine to provide contrast — though they acknowledge some Hungarians do mix in sour cream.
