Chef Eric Banh of Seattle, Wash. recommends his cucumber shrimp salad. Ba Bar hide caption
toggle caption Ba BarIt’s nearing Labor Day — the unofficial end of summer — which means cucumber season is coming to a close. And, if you’re trying to get a few more summer salads in before then, you’re not alone.
TikTok’s most recent food craze is cucumber salad. And social media creator Logan Moffitt, known as @logagm on TikTok, has been posting near-daily cucumber salad recipe videos that have inspired TikTok users to eat an entire cucumber in one sitting.
Each video starts with some variation of, “Sometimes you need to eat an entire cucumber, this is the best way to do it.” Moffitt then slices a cucumber on a mandoline — a feat that has proven dangerous for some TikTok users — then adds sauce before giving everything a good shake.
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Many of Moffitt’s recipes — like this one — are variations on an Asian cucumber salad — and ingredients are never measured:
Soy sauce
Fish sauce
Sesame oil
MSG
Rice wine vinegar
One grated clove of garlic (again, be careful with the grater)
Sugar
Chili oil
Green onion
His videos have inspired a flurry of TikTok users creating their own takes on cucumber salad:
“The one that I was most intrigued by was the cream cheese and lox and everything bagel one,” said user @soogia1.
User @forevaheatha did the “California roll inspired cucumber salad”
“I’m thinking we do like feta, spinach, onion, garlic, lemon, olive oil, that kind of vibe,” user @whitneyhanslow said.
User @saltnpiipa made a “cucumbery, peanut buttery, Asian-infused bowl of deliciousness.”
When you’re not in the mood to whip up a multi-ingredient dish, you can always eat cucumbers raw with a bit of sea salt and olive oil.
But for those ready to try out some new cucumber recipes, we asked a few chefs for their favorite ways to eat a cucumber.
Eric Banh, executive chef and cofounder of Saigon Siblings restaurants in Seattle. Look at Lao Studios/Eric Banh hide caption
toggle caption Look at Lao Studios/Eric BanhEric Banh, a Chinese-Vietnamese chef and restaurateur from Seattle says he likes to start with an English cucumber — the big ones that often come in plastic at the grocery store — “because [of] the consistency of it and it also has a better crunch.”
One of Banh’s favorite cucumber dishes is his cucumber shrimp salad.
“We mix it with our pickled pickled carrots and daikon, which is a classic Vietnamese pickled radish,” Banh told NPR’s Morning Edition.
He then adds pineapple, cooked shrimp and dried shrimp.
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“I think the magic and the secret is dried shrimp,” Banh said. “You just soak it in lukewarm running water for about 30 seconds.”
He tosses it in a dressing made from anchovy fish sauce, water, sugar, garlic and lime juice.
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Chef Banh’s vegan cucumber salad:
