Creamy Tomato Cucumber Salad

Here is another easy, crowd-pleasing summer side dish for your next cookout! Creamy Tomato Cucumber Salad is simple to make, only has seven basic ingredients, and takes only fifteen minutes (or less!) to make. What could be better?

This salad has a creamy, but not too heavy, dressing that still allows the fresh flavor of summer tomatoes shine. It’s a mayonnaise base, but mixed with a bit of Greek yogurt that lightens up the dressing and gives it an extra bit of tang. This beautiful and delicious salad will brighten up any picnic table!

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Creamy Tomato Cucumber Salad Ingredients

As I mentioned, there are only seven basic ingredients: tomatoes, English cucumber, red onion, fresh herbs, salt, mayonnaise, and Greek yogurt.

You can use any type of tomato you like – heirloom tomatoes would be especially beautiful! If you want, you could use grape or cherry tomatoes but it wouldn’t be my first choice, there would be too much skin to tomato meat for my taste. But that’s just me, you do you! Here, I used vine-ripened tomatoes because they are delicious and pretty accessible in most grocery stores.

And about the cucumber: I like using English cucumbers because there are less seeds and the peel is thin so there is no need to peel it or scoop out the seeds. But, if you have another type of cucumber on hand that’s fine. If the peel is thick and/or it has a lot of seeds, just peel the cucumber and scoop out the seeds.

And you can also use any type of fresh herbs you like; leafy type herbs like basil will work better than woody type herbs like rosemary. Basil, parsley, dill, and chives would all work great! I used a combination of basil and parsley (sorry if that counts as eight ingredients then!).

How to Make Creamy Tomato Cucumber Salad

Like I said, this salad is really and fast to make. Here are the steps:

Step One: Mix the Dressing

(You do this step first, in the bowl you are going to mix the rest of the salad in. That way you don’t need to dirty another, smaller bowl just to mix up the dressing and pour it over the other salad ingredients!)

Mix the salt, mayonnaise and Greek yogurt in a large bowl until smooth. Set aside.

Step Two: Prep the Tomatoes

This is the most labor-intensive part of the whole recipe, but it’s really not that hard. You just need to remove the pulpy, seedy part of the tomatoes so the salad doesn’t end up too wet. (If you are using cherry tomatoes however, you can skip the pulp removal part!)

First cut off the stem end of the tomato (the little brown circle where the stem used to be attached). Then cut each tomato in half horizontally. You should have a nice cross-section of the tomato where you can see each chamber of the seeds and pulp.

Then use the tip of your knife to cut the little portion where the flesh attaches to the pulp, and scoop out the pulp with the tip of your knife. You can also use your finger to scoop out the pulp, that is messier but arguably more fun.

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter how you remove the pulp, you just want to get as much of it out as you can without bruising the tomatoes too much. Once you have most of the seeds and pulp removed, cut the tomatoes into large chunks and place them in the bowl with the dressing.

Step Three: Cut the Rest of the Produce (Onion, Cucumber and Herbs)

Cut the English cucumber in half lengthwise, then in large chunks. Thinly slice the red onion. Chop the herbs. Add all of this to the bowl with the dressing and tomatoes.

I’m using my new favorite Shun Classic 7″ Santoku Knife here, it looks beautiful and is so, so sharp. It cuts through the tomato skins so easily it actually makes a mundane task like chopping produce really enjoyable!

Step Four: Mix the Creamy Tomato Cucumber Salad

This last step is easy, since the dressing is already in the bottom of the bowl just grab a large spoon and give the salad a nice, gentle mixing until the dressing is evenly coating the vegetables. Serve the salad right away or keep it in the fridge for a few hours before serving.

Hey, do you need another side dish for a summer potluck? Try my recipes for Bacon Blue Cheese Pasta Salad and Cilantro Garlic and Lime Cauliflower!

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