Picnic Ready: Cucumber Dill Salad with Rye Croutons

This luscious little salad delivers serious crunch. The crisp juicy cucumber marries the toasty rye croutons and the whole crackling affair is coated in velvety dilly sour cream dressing. Pickled shallots, capers, and feta deliver tart and salty punches with each bite, leaving you wanting more.

This recipe came about from my combined love of summery cucumber salads and rye cucumber sandwiches. I wondered if there was a way to combine the two and beef up my usual light cucumber salad to turn into something more substantial, hearty, and packed with bolder flavors. This salad is the result and Im so pleased with it. It pairs well alongside grilled trout or wild salmon, but also holds up perfectly well on its own.

Now. A few words on cucumbers and sour cream and pickled shallots. First, the sour cream. Please use full-fat, real sour cream if you make this recipe. I can think of few things that are as guaranteed to ruin a dish as the low-fat, artificially-soured gunk that tries to pass for sour cream on so many grocery store shelves. I will spare you a longer rant on the topic, but just trust me on this one. Life is too short for low-fat, artificially-soured cream. As for the pickled shallots if youre tempted to skip these, allow me a few words in their defense: yes, they do need to be made ahead but they take literally minutes to prepare and then all they have to do is marinate for a bit.

This salad is just not the best possible version of itself without them. They give it pizazz. The pickling mellows the onion flavour and leaves you with sweet tart goodness. (In a pinch, use red onions instead of shallots).

And finally, our dear friends the cukes. I encourage you to explore whats available at your local farmers market and to use local and organic cucumbers if you can. Conventional cucumbers are repeatedly shown to be high in pesticide residues and its one of the vegetables that I highly recommend buying organic whenever possible. Plus theres nothing like a fresh-off-the-vine juicy crunchy cucumber!

Finally, be sure to slice up the rye croutons and the cucumber cubes quite finely. Small, delicate bite-sized cubes make for a nicer presentation and offer up better bites (with better crunch!) that arent unwieldy.

Do let me know if you make this salad in the comments below. Bon appétit!

Aube is a passionate organic gardener and home cook who likes to share the stories of how food gets to our dinner plates. Her work has been shown on television and at international film festivals. Her web series has been nominated for multiple James Beard Awards for Best Video Webcast (On Location). In 2012, she was the recipient of Saveur Magazine's Best Food Blog award in the video category.