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 red onion sliced
- 1 tablespoon fresh herbs 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
Cuisine American
© SpendWithPennies.com. Content and photographs are copyright protected. Sharing of this recipe is both encouraged and appreciated. Copying and/or pasting full recipes to any social media is strictly prohibited. Please view my photo use policy here.
good
I grew the tomatoes- I grew the cucumbers. Spend with Pennies put it all together in a delicious salad!
Easy
I love it
We had a garden growing up and had this salad daily during the summer. Made this tonight with locally grown tomatoes and cucumbers, and used apple cider vinegar, sea salt, omitted pepper. So good, just like I remember. Thank you for the recipe.
Absolutely refreshing and delicious! I added a little bit of fresh mozzarella chunks too. The flavors of everything are great five stars!
Just so refreshing! Perfect change of pace from lettuce salads! VERY pretty, easy to prep, and pretty darn healthy! My husband and I ate the entire recipe. So, you may want to double it!
I have made many of Holly’s recipes and everyone I’ve tried is a five star rating. I’ve made so.many I now google Holys name first if I need a recipe.
That is so sweet of you, Amanda! I am so happy you are enjoying our recipes.
I made this salad for dinner today. love the red wine vinegar. I doubled the dressing mixture. It was delicious. I will surely make it again.
I added a pinch of sugar and the salad was great!
beautiful and easy salad
I make this salad when we have potluck where I live. Everyone loves it.
we love the broccoli salad and the Cucumber tomato and onion salad
5 stars
This salad was delicious and fresh!
yum! this salad is simple yet very good. thanks for sharing
I chose this for the baking challenge because the tomatoes and cucumber combination can’t be beat. It was so easy to make. Put together quickly and definitely a hit. The perfect combination for a summer BBQ or a quick salad for a summer dinner. Absolutely a keeper.
Hubs and I loved this recipe! It was so easy to make with my chopper/slicer do-hicky! It took no time at all! Hubs wanted a more robust dressing, so he made what he wanted, Italian style. I wanted to add radishes. I love radishes! It was so delicious! Another keeper! We highly recommend! Perfect for summer!
I added watermelon to this amazing salad! This salad is amazing! I love it! Great recipe!
I added two extra tablespoons of the red wine vinegar. I let it sit overnight in the refrigerator.It was amazing! I think I could eat this everyday.