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Cucumber Tomato Salad is a classic salad, light, cooling, and oh-so refreshing. This easy salad is made with sliced cucumbers & juicy tomatoes and enhanced with slivers of red onion and a tangy vinaigrette dressing.
Serve cucumber tomato onion salad next to grilled or roasted meats or fish, such as marinated beef or chicken kabobs, grilled salmon, or pork tenderloin.
How to Make Cucumber Tomato Salad
When the farmer’s markets start overflowing with juicy garden fresh veggies, I take my cue to make a big bowl of cucumber tomato salad.
- Combine all dressing ingredients (per recipe below).
- Slice all vegetables and toss with the dressing.
I love using a combination of fresh or dried oregano and basil in this salad to bring out its Mediterranean essence. Chopped fresh dill and-or parsley deliver equally excellent herbal notes.
English cucumber is ideal for this recipe. The peels are tender enough that there’s no need to remove them, and the seeds are virtually nonexistent. If you only have regular salad cukes on hand, those are perfectly suitable as well. Just peel them, and, if the seeds seem tough, scoop them out and then slice.
Dressing for Cucumber Tomato Salad
Honestly, this salad really doesn’t need much, a simple dressing allows the flavor of the veggies to shine and keeps the salad light and fresh.
A splash of vinegar and a bit of olive oil with salt & pepper. I most often use red wine vinegar but you can use your favorite (infused oils and vinegars are great here too).
Can I Make it Ahead?
This salad tastes great served cold and can be made ahead. Of course it’s best made the day you’re serving it but you can keep it for a couple of days and drain any juices. Whenever I’m planning this dish and need to get a jump on dinner, I partially prep the tomato-cucumber salad.
- In the same bowl you plan to make the salad, whisk together the wine vinegar, olive oil, herbs, salt and pepper.
- Peel and cut the onion into slivers and toss in the vinaigrette.
- Cover and refrigerate for up to a day in advance.
The onions will stay crunchy while helping the dressing mellow and develop flavor. To assemble the salad, all you have to do is slice the cucumbers and tomatoes, toss with the onion and vinaigrette mixture, and briefly refrigerate before serving.
More Fun Additions
You can have a lot of fun with this recipe, by treating it as a foundation. Go ahead and layer in other fresh and tasty ingredients like crumbled feta, mozzarella balls, avocado chunks or chopped fennel bulb. Got stale bread? Even better, turn this into a Panzanella Salad to make it a meal!
The options are limited only by your own creativity!
Salads with a Cucumber Crunch
- Creamy Cucumber Salad – summertime staple!
- Cucumber Onion Salad – light & refreshing
- Cucumber Avocado Salad – simple 3 ingredient dressing!
- Cucumber Dill Salad – made with a lemon vinaigrette
- Creamy Cucumber Pasta Salad – potluck favorite!
Cucumber Tomato Salad
Ingredients
- 1 English cucumber sliced
- 2 to 3 large ripe tomatoes diced
- ½ medium red onion thinly sliced
- 1 tablespoon fresh herbs any combination of parsley, basil and/or dill, optional
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
- salt and black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients in a bowl and toss well.
- Refrigerate at least 20 minutes before serving.
Nutrition Information
Nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and brands of ingredients used.
Course Salad
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Yummy
So simple yet so refreshing. I will be making this all season, even my husband loved it!
I never leave comments on recipes and I really should! But I feel its my duty to endorse this recipe because we essentially live off of this salad as a side from May to October haha. We never get sick of it, it takes 10 minutes to throw together and is so fresh and delicious!! If you haven’t tried it, you have to!
So glad you are loving this recipe, Katie!
Simple, easy and delicious!
I went looking for this kind of recipe and as soon as I saw Spend With Pennies I thought, this one! I have yet to try one of Holly’s recipes that aren’t absolutely delicious!
Fresh ingredients – easy and tasty recipe – many of the ingredients could come from our garden too!
So easy and it tastes great. I didn’t have fresh herbs do I soaked them in the sauce first.
This was a nice summer salad. I added some crumbled feta cheese. It really added another great layer a flavor.
Hi. Planning on making this weekend but quick question. If using dried spices would you still use a total of one tablespoon or not? Also would you do half oregano and half basil to total recommended amount? Thanks.
The general rule of thumb is one-third. So to replace 1 tablespoon of fresh herbs you will want to use 1 teaspoon of dried herbs. I love to use basil, parsley, or dill in this recipe but you can us the herbs you prefer. Enjoy!
The recipe indicates “and/or” concerning the herbs. Does this mean that we can fix it with all three herbs together or just one herb at a time, please? I just want to be sure I understand.
You can create any combination you want with the herbs to have new flavors every time!
I used some balsamic vinaigrette and some olive garden Italian dressing mixed in to and it’s great. I also used a Vidalia onion instead of red cuz I’m not fond of red onion raw.
Love ot