Spicy Cucumber Chicken Salad

The Spicy Cucumber Chicken Salad is a good dish to have on a hot summer day - or any other time when you don’t want to do a lot of cooking but still want to eat a healthy, tasty dish. This is also one of our favourite things to bring to parties.



The basic ingredients are boiled chicken breast and sliced cucumber. Start by boiling a full chicken breast (or half) in a small amount of water. Make sure the water is boiling before putting the chicken in. After the chicken is in, wait for the water to start to boil again and immediate turn the heat to simmer or low. Do not let the water continue to fully boil while the chicken is in the water; this will cause all the juice and flavor to be boiled out from the chicken. Depending on the size of the breast, it might take about 15 minutes on each side to get the chicken fully cooked. One way to tell if the chicken is cooked is to stick a chopstick or fork in the chicken. The meat should feel firm and no blood or liquid should come out if it is fully cooked. Set the chick aside to cool. It is easier to shred the chicken when it is cool. If you do not want to shred the chicken, you can also cube it, but shredding makes the dish look nicer and lets the chicken soak up the sauce better.

Peel a couple of cucumbers, leaving a few long strips of skin. This is done just for looks, and if you really don’t like having a cucumber that looks like a zebra, you can peel the whole thing. In the same way, if you don’t like eating naked cucumber, you can leave the whole skin on. Cut it in half, and clean out the inside of the cucumber with a small spoon or knife. If you don’t, the seeds inside of the cucumber tend to give out water, and it makes the whole salad watery.

Using your fingers, shred the chicken breast into long, thin pieces. The smaller the pieces, the better, since this will help make the mixing easier.

Slice the cucumber and mix with the shredded chicken. Toss in the following ingredients with the chicken and cucumber:

• 1 tablespoon of sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of garlic and soy bean paste (or spicy hot oil)

All the above ingredients are a suggested amount and should be adjusted to taste.

While the first three items give the salad the basic taste, it is the last item that gives it the punch. I like to use the garlic and soy bean paste because the garlic and fermented soy bean in the paste give the salad the special Northern Chinese flavor and add depth to the salad. You can add any amount you like but watch out - it can get hot very quickly! The kind I like to use is pictured at left. You can use any similar spice hot paste from an oriental grocery store. I have experimented with the different pastes and have a collection of them for adding to noodles and as dipping sauces for regular dishes.

If you do not like the garlic or fermented soy bean taste, you can always use plain old chili oil, just for the spicy hot flavor. This of course will create a spicy appearance, courtesy of the little specks of chili in the salad.

A couple more things to point out. Try to do the final tossing right before you are ready to eat the salad. Definitely do not let the salad sit overnight. This will turn it into a watery mix and the cucumber will end up tasting more like pickles. However, you can prepare the cucumber and chicken ahead ahead of time; just don’t add the final ingredients yet. One trick I use for parties is to keep the cucumber and chicken in a bowl and the sesame oil, sugar, salt and hot sauce premixed in a smaller container. Then I toss them all together when I get to the party.

This dish has always been a hit at summer picnics and even chili cookoffs. This can pass as a salad as well as a chili dish.