Gochujang Smashed Cucumber

Do you need to work out some stress and prepare some delicious treat at the same time? You can with this gochujang smashed cucumber recipe, killing two birds with one stone, or more accurately with your hands!

Ingredients for Gochujang Smashed Cucumber

This delicious side dish needs only a handful of ingredients:

• cucumbers
• gochujang (Korean chili paste)
• garlic
• soy sauce
• sugar
• sesame oil

Most major grocery stores should carry all these items, but if they don’t, a quick trip to your local Asian market should net you gochujang and sesame oil.

You can even order them online from Amazon or H-Mart should that proof to be the most convenient method for you.

Making the Gochujang Smashed Cucumber

Once you gather all the ingredients, we can move on to making this delicious cucumber snack/side dish:

1. Wash the cucumbers and pat dry. Smash each against your chopping board until the cucumber breaks into bite-size pieces. There is no need to use a knife, in fact, please don’t use a knife.

2. Transfer all the pieces of cucumber into a ziplock back. Then add the rest of the ingredients, and massage gently into the cucumber.

3. Let the cucumber rest in the fridge for at least one hour before eating.

Smash, not Cut!

The reason why we want to smash and not cut the cucumber is because by smashing the cucumbers, we create so much more craggy surface for the sauce to cling on to, making our final product so much tastier.

On the other side, if we cut the cucumbers instead of smashing them, we end up with smooth surfaces and also less of them. The sauce will have less opportunities to cling on to our cucumbers, and we end up with a pale comparison compared to their smashed version.

Snack or Side Dish

You can munch on them as is and treat is as light delicious snack if you want. In my home though, I serve this along with steamed white rice and many other dishes. We go through quite a bit of little side dishes like this.