Smashing Cucumber to Smashed Cucumbers

Smashing cucumber to smashed cucumbers

According to TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), cucumber cleanses and detoxifies, it helps reduce high blood pressure.

With its “cooling” element, also eases the internal heat of the body. In short, eat plenty of cucumber when it’s in season! And that season is now.

Smashing cucumbers is an ancient Chinese practice, pairing the heady, intense, spicy food of Sichuan province with the coolness of cucumbers to offset the heat.

According to Chinese records, cucumber was introduced to China around 100 B.C. (during the Han Dynasty) from countries to the west by way of what later became known as the Silk Route, later taken by Marco Polo.

For six to seven hundred years, cucumber bore the name hu gua, meaning “foreign melon”, but a later name, huang gua, meaning “yellow melon” is now more commonly used.

This refreshing and popular Hunanese appetizer of cold cucumbers dressed with garlic, dried chili flakes, and vinegar totally fits the bill!

Pai huang gua takes its name from whacking the cucumbers with the flat side of a cleaver – once smashed, it encourages them to absorb the delicious and spicy dressing.

How to smash cucumbers? Smashing Cucumber to Smashed Cucumbers

Step 1

• Start by washing the cucumbers thoroughly.
• Lay them on a cutting board and gently smack them with the flat side of a knife or a rolling pin.
• The goal is to slightly crush them so they break open, allowing the flavours to penetrate more deeply.
• Whilst slippery sliced cucumbers find it hard to hold on to their dressing, a smashed cucumber positively embraces flavour, soaking up dressings into its smashed broken surface.
• Then, cut the cucumbers into bite-sized pieces.

Step 2

• Place the cucumber pieces in a mixing bowl and sprinkle with the salt.
• Mix well and let them sit for about 10 minutes.
• This resting process helps draw out some of the water, making the cucumbers even crisper.
• You’ll also retain the shiny cucumber colour.

Step 3
After letting them rest, drain any excess liquid from the cucumbers to ensure your salad isn’t watery.

In China, cucumbers are considered the ideal foil for hot weather and hot food.

Versions of this salad, Pai Huang Gua (Chinese smashed cucumber salad), are served all over the country, sometimes spiked with dried chiles and Sichuan peppercorns for more dimensions of flavour.

Traditionally, in a spicy cucumber salad, the cucumbers are sliced into rounds. In my case, this made for a good salad, but I found some issues as well.

When I sliced the cucumbers thinly (1/8 to 1/4″), after the first 10ish minutes, the slices lost some of their crunch (the most appealing part of cucumbers!).

When I sliced them thicker (1/2″), they stayed crunchy but their large uniform surface area meant they didn’t absorb the flavour of the dressing as well.

So I opted for smashing cucumbers, which is traditional and common in Chinese cucumber salads.

In Beijing, people buy whole chilled cucumbers from street vendors and munch them on the go, much as Americans become attached to their cups of iced coffee in summer.

The smashing process, a classic Chinese technique, cracks the skin, helps release the seeds and splits the flesh into appealing craggy pieces.

Salting and chilling the cracked cucumbers give them the perfect cool, crunchy, watery mouth feel.

The Chinese use the side of their Chinese cleaver (the one that looks like a butcher knife) but any wide cutting knife will do.

If you don’t have a Chinese style cleaver a rolling pin works great and you don’t have to have as much arm strength to do the smash.

Smashing cucumbers creates all these nooks and crannies, creating more ridged opportunities for the dressing to seep into the cucumbers.

At the same time, the smashed cucumber sections stay crunchy because they have more heft than thinly sliced cucumbers.

Simply, bash the cucumbers so they burst open and your dressing creeps into all those cracks and crevices.

Smashed cucumbers are coated in a fast yet incredibly delicious sweet-salty-spicy-tangy dressing and finished with scallions and toasted sesame seeds for freshness and crunch.

Smashed cucumbers salad is an addictive blend of savoury, salty, spicy, sweet, and tangy flavours, all wrapped in a perfectly crunchy cucumber package.