Cold-Soak Cucumber Tomato Salad
A Mediterranean chopped salad rebuilt from dried vegetables and a shaken dressing, no cooler required.
- calories
- 410
- weight
- 2.6 oz
- cal / oz
- 158
- protein
- 6 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 5 min
- water
- 180 ml cold
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Lunch
- Dinner
- Cold soak
- No cook
- Backpacking
- Bikepacking
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- Eat in the bag
- Dehydrate ahead
- Shelf stable
- Dump and stir
Ingredients
| Dried cucumber slices | 1/3 cup | home-dehydrated at 125F until leathery, not brittle |
|---|---|---|
| Sun-dried tomatoes | 1/3 cup | the dry-packed kind, snipped small |
| Dried red onion | 1 tbsp | flakes or minced, not onion powder |
| Dried parsley | 1 tbsp | |
| Dried dill | 1 tsp | |
| Garlic granules | 1/2 tsp | stands in for two fresh cloves |
| Extra virgin olive oil | 2 tbsp | dropper bottle |
| Red wine vinegar | 2 tsp | small leakproof vial |
| Lemon juice powder or a citric acid pinch | 1/2 tsp | |
| Honey | 1 tsp | a squeeze packet, or sugar if you would rather keep it vegan |
| Sea salt and black pepper | 1/4 tsp each |
Method
- Tip the dry bag into a jar or a wide-mouth bottle and pour in 180 ml of cold water. Enough to cover, not to drown.
- Cap it and shake. Let it sit 60 to 90 minutes. Cucumber takes the longest; tomatoes will be ready well before it.
- Pour off any standing water that did not get absorbed. Do not skip this or the dressing goes thin.
- Add the oil, vinegar, lemon powder, honey, salt, and pepper. Shake hard for ten seconds.
- Eat straight from the jar. It gets better after another twenty minutes if you have the patience.
The original is a fridge salad: fresh cucumber, ripe tomatoes, raw onion. None of that survives a pack. Dehydrating the vegetables at home solves it. Cucumber rehydrates into something closer to a quick pickle than a fresh slice, which is fine, and sun-dried tomatoes come back sweeter and more concentrated than the fresh ones ever were.
Draining matters more than any other step. The vegetables release water for a while after they look done, and if that water is still in the jar the oil and vinegar just float on top of it. Pour it off, then dress. The honey is not for sweetness so much as to keep the vinegar and lemon from reading as sharp on their own.
Packing
All the dried vegetables, herbs, garlic, salt, and pepper go into one bag at home. Oil, vinegar, and honey ride separately in small bottles inside a ziplock, because one of them will eventually leak.
Variations
- Stir in a foil packet of tuna or a handful of chickpea snacks to make it dinner instead of a side.
- Skip the honey and use a pinch of sugar and it is vegan.
- Crumbled feta holds a day out of the cooler if you are car camping.
https://blog.9jakitchen.com/cucumber-tomato-salad-fresh-healthy-recipe