Kachumber Salad
INDIAN · INDIA

Kachumber Salad

कचुम्बर सलादSalad

India's everyday chopped salad: cucumber, tomato and onion tossed with lime, toasted cumin and a hit of green chilli. Cold, crunchy and sharp — the reset button between bites of biryani or a heavy curry.

Total
20 min
Heat
2/5
Serves
4

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Flavour profile

Heat
Funk
Acid
Richness
Umami
  • Crunchy
  • Fresh
  • Peppery
  • Sour

The real deal

Region
All over India — the standard chopped salad served with biryani, thalis and tandoori plates.
Technique
Roasting and crushing cumin seeds, then tossing everything raw with lime and salt so the vegetables stay crisp.
We kept
No oil, no cooking, no sugar: cucumber, tomato, onion, green chilli, lime and roasted cumin. We drain the vegetables first, the way home cooks do, so the salad never goes watery.

Ingredients

4 Serves

salad

  • 2 · peeled, seeds scooped out
  • 3 · firm, deseeded
  • 1 · finely chopped
  • 2 · minced, seeds in
  • 20 g · chopped

Dressing

  • 1½ tsp
  • 2
  • 1 tsp
  • ½ tsp
  • ½ tsp · optional

Method

  1. Peel and halve it lengthways. Run a teaspoon down the middle to scoop out the watery seeds, then cut the flesh into rough 0.5 cm dice. Halve the , squeeze out the seeds and cut into 0.5 cm dice, keeping them a touch larger than the cucumber so they hold shape. Chop very fine, then drop it into a bowl of ice-cold water for 5 min to blunt its raw bite and make it crunchy. Drain the onion and pat it dry, and tip the chopped cucumber and tomato into a colander so any loose juices run off.

    The seeds are the enemy: left in, they leak and turn the whole salad into soup within minutes.

    A dry salad is a salad that stays sharp. Wet vegetables dilute the lime and go limp.

  2. Mince the very fine, keeping the seeds in — that's where the fire lives. Chop the reasonably fine, stems and all — the stems carry the most flavour. Put 1½ tsp in a dry pan over medium heat and toast, shaking often, until they darken a shade and smell warm and nutty, about 1 min 30 sec. Tip straight onto a plate to stop them cooking. Crush the cooled cumin in a mortar or under a rolling pin to a coarse rubble — you want little crunching grains, not powder.

    Whole cumin burns in a blink once it smells fragrant. Move it out of the pan the moment it does.

  3. Squeeze the into a small bowl and pick out the pips.

  4. Tip the drained vegetables into a wide bowl with the chilli and coriander. Scatter over the crushed cumin, pour on the lime juice, add 1 tsp , a good grind of and, if using, the ½ tsp . Toss gently with your hands — squeeze nothing, toss like you mean to keep every edge. Taste and add more salt; it should taste bright and a little under-salted until the juices come out.

    Salt last-ish, lime first-ish: if it sits longer than half an hour the salt drags water out and the crunch goes.

  5. Serve immediately, cold and heaped in a bowl — with biryani, dal, tandoori anything, or straight off a spoon standing at the counter.

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