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When the summer heat kicks in I start craving all things light and refreshing, this Cucumber Vinegar Salad is one of the first recipes I turn to. It’s crisp, tangy, a little sweet, and comes together in just 10 minutes. Whether I’m firing up the grill or heading to a potluck, this simple cucumber salad always finds a place on my table.
5 Star Reviews ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“Excellent recipe! I tripled it after making 1 batch – shared it with family and friends! The rating continues to be a 5 from all who are sharing in the amazingly, cool, crisp, refreshing taste of summer all year around!” – Elaine
“This is so good! Tastes just like what my mom used to make! Thank You so much!” – Tamara
“My hubby and I absolutely love this recipe! I can’t wait to make this again. Such a great side for dinner and went will with our burgers the other night!” – Beth
Why I Love This Cucumber Salad
This salad brings back so many memories from my childhood. My mom used to make it every summer, and I remember sneaking forkfuls straight from the fridge because it was just that good. Now I keep the tradition alive and make it for my own family—especially when I need something quick, light, and full of flavor.
The cucumbers soak up the sweet-tart vinegar dressing, and the red onions add just enough bite. It’s the perfect refreshing side dish for everything from Hawaiian Grilled Teriyaki Chicken to simple grilled BBQ Hot Dogs.
🩷 Erica
Table of Contents
Key Ingredients You’ll Need
The best part about this salad is you only need a few fresh ingredients and a couple pantry staples.
- Cucumbers – I usually go for about 5 fresh ones. If the skin is thick or waxy, I peel them first.
- Red Onion – Adds a beautiful pop of color and a little sharpness. You can also use sweet onion if you prefer.
- Apple Cider Vinegar – My favorite for its fruity tang, but white vinegar, rice vinegar, or red wine vinegar work great too.
- Sugar – Balances the acidity. Feel free to adjust the amount to taste.
What Kind of Cucumbers Work Best?
Honestly, most slicing cucumbers will do the trick, but these are my favorites:
- English Cucumbers – No need to peel, and they’re nice and crisp.
- Persian Cucumbers – Small, crunchy, and perfect for salads.
- Garden Cucumbers – If you grow your own, definitely use them! Just peel if the skins are tough.
If using regular grocery store cucumbers, I recommend peeling them if the skin is thick and waxy.
Salad Variations
Want to make this cucumber vinegar salad your own? Here are some easy ways to mix things up:
- Add halved cherry or grape tomatoes for extra color.
- Toss in feta cheese for a creamy, salty contrast.
- Sprinkle with fresh dill, parsley, or basil.
- Try a pinch of red pepper flakes for a little heat.
- Mix in bell peppers or even chickpeas for more variety.
- And if you’re into sushi flavors, check out my California Roll Cucumber Salad for another fun twist.
How to Make Cucumber Vinegar Salad
- Peel and slice cucumbers into thin rounds.
- Cut onion in half and slice it very thin.
- In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the vinegar, sugar, water, salt, and pepper until the sugar is dissolved.
- Pour the vinegar mixture over the cucumbers and onions, and stir until everything is evenly coated. Refrigerate for at least 20 minutes to let the flavors soak in.
Make-Ahead and Storage Tips
This salad tastes even better after it sits for a bit. I like to make it at least 20 minutes ahead of time, but it will keep well in the fridge for up to 3 days in an airtight container. Just keep in mind that the cucumbers will soften over time—but that dressing? Still amazing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, it can be! Just substitute the sugar with your favorite keto-friendly sweetener like monk fruit or erythritol. It’s also naturally gluten-free and vegan, making it a great side dish for just about any dietary preference.
Definitely! Apple cider vinegar is my go-to, but white vinegar, rice vinegar, or red wine vinegar are all great alternatives.
If they have a thick waxy skin, yes. If they’re thin-skinned, just give them a good wash and slice away.
At least 20 minutes for best flavor, but you can leave it longer—up to 3 days in the fridge.
It pairs perfectly with my Blue Cheese Burgers, Grilled Pork Tenderloin, or Honey BBQ Chicken.
More Cucumber Salad Recipes
Have you tried this Cucumber Vinegar Salad? I’d love to hear what you think! Drop a comment below and let me know how your salad turned out or if you put your own spin on it. 🥒💚
Cucumber Vinegar Salad
Ingredients
- 5 cucumbers
- 1 red onion
- 1 cup apple cider vinegar
- ½ cup sugar (more or less to taste)
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Peel and slice cucumbers into thin slices.
- Cut onion in half and cut into very thin slices.
- Combine onions and cucumbers in a large bowl.
- In a separate, medium-sized bowl, combine remaining ingredients. Stir until sugar dissolves.
- Pour vinegar mixture over cucumbers and onions. Stir until the cucumbers are evenly coated in the dressing.*
- Refrigerate at least 20 minutes. Before serving, drain liquid and place in a serving bowl to serve.
Video
Notes
- You can also combine the cucumbers, onions, and dressing in a resealable plastic bag to marinate. Drain liquid from the bag and pour the salad into a bowl to serve.
- You can also use white vinegar, red wine vinegar, or rice vinegar in place of the apple cider vinegar.
- Depending on your personal taste you can adjust the sugar to make it more or less sweet and adjust the water to make the flavor more or less strong.
- Store these vinegar marinated cucumbers in your fridge in a jar or air-tight container for up to three days. Any longer than that and the cucumbers will lose their “crisp-ness” and become limp.
Nutrition Information
More Summer Salads
Looking for more easy, refreshing side dishes? Check out these favorites:
Easy and versatile. Tastes great adding your own herbs or additions as suggested.
I made this and it’s been in my refrigerator now for a month, the cucumbers and onions are still crisp and so infused with flavor i put it on my salad along with spoonfuls of the vinegar. Sooo refreshing.
So delicious, for the life of me, I had totally forgotten this one….haven’t made this in almost 15 years!
thanks for bringing it back to mind! BTW, your blog is beautiful & great!
Excellent base recipe. I use about a teaspoon of sugar and the salad is really delicious and so quick and easy to prepare.
Thank you, Sharon! I’m glad you enjoyed!
Very good. I put 1/4 cup sugar and less sweet,more to our liking.
Great idea!
I have eaten these a few times at restaurants around Baltimore and I grew a lot of cumbers this year, so…
This tastes excellent!
Thank you so much Lawrence! So glad you liked this recipe!
Yummy! I follow the recipe exactly and it was so good! Thank you.
I’m so glad you liked it, thanks for the review!
Can I use regular vinegar?
Easy to do tastes great!
My mom always added crushed red pepper!
Soo…. I’ve been making this since last summer when I needed to change things up. Made if for Labor Day, Thanksgiving, a family reunion, basically at least once or twice a week… It’s THAT AMAZING! However the second time I made it, I mistakenly grabbed the wrong bottle and switched the apple cider vinegar with RED WINE vinegar!! It made the perfect sweet/tart combination… and I also added cherry tomatoes sliced in half… and now, all anyone asks when they are come over is if I made any of the Cherry Tomato Cucumer Onion Salad!?! All the rest of the ingredients stay the same!!!
#HugeHit
Mark
Hi Mark– red wine vinegar would be delicious! I also love the idea of adding some cherry tomatoes. So glad it was such a hit for you and your friends/family! Thanks for the nice comment and 5 stars!
Looks good
As others have said, this recipe is quite close to what my mother made growing up. The only difference is that after slicing the cucumbers, she would heavily salt the slices and let them sit for a few hours. The cucumbers were not crisp, but somehow I think it brought out the flavor. Before marinating she would rinse and drain the cucumbers. Delicious!
That sounds great! I’ll have to try that next time!
I am 70 and remember this as made by my grandmother and mother, so it goes back a ways. Both of them salted the cucumber slices after slicing to “sweat” the cucumber. They cucumbers were not crisp, but they tasted great. They did not rinse the cucumbers, but did not have salt in the rest of the recipe.
My mother always used wine vinegar, it has a more refined taste. Frankly, this is something that doesn’t require a recipe, it’s so simple, second nature.
Loved this recipe. I didn’t have any Apple Cider Vinegar so I substituted with Balsamic Vinegar. It came out great with a slightly darker color and a bit sweeter taste. I think I will keep doing it with Balsamic.
Yum! That sounds delicious! I love a good balsamic. Will definitely try it that way next time, just for fun!
Try this recipe with white balsamic vinegar or rice vinegar (I buy both of these at Trader Joe’s). I also put in a teaspoon of sesame oil and a few green onions, sliced diagonally. For a little heat, put in as much or as little crushed peppers as you would like.
When storing in frig for a few days, should you drain the marinade?
I like to keep it in the marinade when storing. It gets a more infused flavor that is delicious!
After searching Pinterest for a cucumber/onion salad~I stumbled upon your recipe. I am taking the plunge as will follow the recipe as written, then add make a comment. I can not wait to make, also making cucumber/lemon water as well. Now I need to find a recipe for rhubarb since my friends have gifted me an abundance of this sweet treat. I also am now a “follower”!!!.
Hi Sue! Welcome to Favorite Family Recipes! We are so excited that you found us 😀 We don’t have many rhubarb recipes (in fact I don’t think we have any on the site yet) we will have to put it on our “to-do” list. Our mom has a great strawberry rhubarb pie recipe but none of us have made it in years. Maybe we need to pull it out and get it on the site!
My mom use to make this but without the onions. I read in comments about rubarb recipe. I have a simple one. Just take rubarb(washed well) cut up into pieses anout a inch long. Put into a pot and add enough water to get rubarb to start to boil. Ten stalks about 2 cups water. Bring water to boil add rubarb. After it softens stir and boil till starts to get stringy. Add about a 1/2 cip of sugar and boil till it gets thick. Sweeten to your liking. Serve and enjoy. You can add sliced strawberys to your liking and about a 1/4 cup of corn starch mixed with cold water till corn starch is thick. Add to sweetened rubarb and bake in a pastry pie shell.
325° oven till crust is lightly browned. Strawberry rubarb pie. If you want no strawberries just leave them out. Yum
Thanks for sharing your delicious rhubarb recipe, YUM!
I hadn’t made these for a while, and forgot ratios of ingredients– your post is easy to follow and perfect. I don’t peel the cucumbers, just wash well. Thanks!!
Love it, one of my kids favorites and so easy! Try cucumbers with tajin seasoning too! Just sprinkle some on some sliced or diced cucumbers and enjoy! Sooooooo good! It’s also really good on fresh fruit.
Google rhubarb cake. I was not a rhubarb fan, but rhubarb cake converted me.
My mother made this recipe for years and now I have done the same. I double the water and use 2 T of sugar. One comment and request. I’m on an anti-plastic campaign after seeing a documentary about the plastic island in the Pacific Ocean. Could we find other ways to marinate than using a plastic bag?
Sure, you can absolutely marinate it in a glass bowl if you would prefer. Or glass jars.
Use a glass bowl with fitted lid that seals.
Yes , you can use a glass mason jar……..
Hi, use a plastic bowl with a lid. Still plastic but reusable!
Great idea Lynn!
My mom would make this yummy cucumber salad every summer, all summer long. That was many many moons ago. Your recipe is as close to my mom’s as you can get! I’m going to make this for Memorial Day. Brings back so many memories.
So glad this beings back happy memories for you! That is what FFR is all about! So so happy you like this recipe!
This is excellent as I love the vinegar flavor. Another spice I found good is adding mustard seed and some garlic cloves then you really have something. lol.
I love it with the sugar. My mom used to make this when we were kids. What a treat, and great memories to boot!
We love these kind of comments! We love it when our recipes bring happy memories to our readers! Thank you for sharing!
Excellent! Tastes great & so easy to make.
My mother made this all the time when we were growing up, minus the sugar which frankly doesn’t appeal to me – I dislike sweet pickles. For that reason: 3 stars. Without sugar, 5 stars! A great side dish, and a nice addition to other kinds of salad.
My mother always made this without the sugar also. I love the vinegar taste with the salt and pepper.
Same here. No sugar and with salt, pepper and Walla Walla sweet onions too. Mmm!
I grew up with these and still make the cucumbers, no sugar!! But you may want to finish them off in a day or two. The longer they sit the stronger the vinegar taste. I do sometimes add sliced or chopped tomatoes. Tried onions a couple of times, but don’t care for them, so I don’t add anymore. In mine I add cucumbers, with generous seasonings of salt, pepper, onion powder and a couple tablespoons of minced garlic.
Put all in a decent size bowl that has its own top, add cider vinegar. Put quite a bit of cider vinegar in, trying to cover the cucumbers. Put lid on shake vigorously. Put in refrigerator, shake often. When you want them for a side, pull out of the fridge and put bowl on the table. YUM YUM!!!
Hi Lynn- Thank you for all the wonderful suggestions! I love the idea of using garlic and tomatoes. I bet that adds such a good flavor. YUM!
I was hoping to find a recipe without the sugar… maybe I can use sugar substitute
Have you tried Stevia? Stevia works great in this recipe, but it is much sweeter than sugar. According to the Stevia website, you only need 1/2 teaspoon of powdered Stevia or Stevia liquid concentrate to replace 1/2 cup of sugar. https://www.stevia.net/conversion.html
The sugar offsets the acidity of the vinegar. I usually find adding the sugar doesn’t actually sweeten it. I add a little sugar to my tomato sauces and chili. Never sweetens it.
Your exactly right about the sugar! It definitely adds to the flavor and my mom always added the sugar. I don’t like sweet pickles either as another comment was made and feel these still taste like vinegar, onion and cucumbers. Also can use white vinegar too. Delicious!
Very good!!! I added diced tomatoes! Made exactly by the recipe.
Thank you!
Can I use malt vinegar to soak cucumbers in?
Do not ever put radishes in it ruins the batch totally.
This looks delicious! It almost reminds me of a type of greek salad if you add tomatoes and feta! Thank you for sharing, I can’t wait to make this at home! Sounds so refreshing.
I used Truvia instead of sugar. Fantastic.
This recipe reminds me of Sunday dinner at grandma’s.
Easy to make and very good in taste