Creamy Tzatziki Cucumber Salad

Creamy cucumber salad recipe with a tzatziki-inspired dressing made with Greek yogurt, vinegar, fresh lemon, garlic, and dill. It’s light, refreshing and less than 30 calories per serving! Jump to the Creamy Cucumber Salad Recipe or read on to see our tips for making it.

This easy cucumber salad, inspired by our tzatziki yogurt sauce, has been on repeat lately. It’s straightforward to make, goes with just about anything, and thanks to the Greek yogurt, it is healthy! Less than 30 calories for one cup, now that’s something we can get behind!

How to Make the Best Creamy Cucumber Salad

Our creamy cucumber salad and the vinegar based version start the same way. We salt the cucumbers. Think of this as a quick marinade for the cucumbers. Salting makes cucumbers taste better, with minimal effort from you. We do the same thing with tomatoes when making bruschetta or tomato salad.

To do it, toss cucumber slices with salt in a colander. After 30 minutes, rinse the cucumbers and shake mostly dry. While you wait for the cucumbers, make the dressing, which also benefits from some extra time.

For the dressing, combine Greek yogurt with garlic, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, dill and lots of black pepper. Season with a pinch of salt then set it aside while the cucumbers sit. Since there’s garlic in the dressing, the extra 30 minutes gives the garlic a chance to flavor the dressing.

Since we love cucumber and onion salads, we throw in sliced red onion. Just like garlic, onion adds flavor, so we add the sliced onions straight to the dressing. This way, while the cucumbers are salting, we take full advantage of the time to infuse as much flavor into the dressing as possible.

By the way, you can definitely make this cucumber salad with sour cream instead of yogurt. Just swap the yogurt for sour cream, and you’ll have more of a German-style cucumber salad.

When the cucumbers are ready, toss them with the dressing and onions. You can serve the salad straight away or let it sit in the refrigerator a day or so. As the salad sits, it becomes more flavorful, but the cucumbers do soften a bit. We’re not too worried about that, but it is something to keep in mind.

You May Also Like These Salads with Cucumber

• Here’s our simplified Creamy Tzatziki Sauce.
• Cucumbers add lots of crunch to our easy chickpea salad with lemon and dill.
• This simple Greek salad is one of our favorite salads on the blog.
• We love this lemony arugula and couscous salad with cucumbers and feta cheese.
• Everyone loves this simple orzo pasta salad with cucumber, olives, artichokes, tomato, and fresh herbs.
• One of our most popular recipes, these light lemony chicken breasts are served with a salad of cucumber, tomatoes, and feta.
• We love this colorful chopped cucumber and tomato salad. With tomatoes, onion, cucumber, parsley, and a simple vinaigrette, the salad is crunchy, ultra-flavorful and is vegetarian.