Cucumber Salad With Cottage Cheese
Since I started cutting out wheat and eating fewer carbs to lose weight, I had to come up with some new lunches and side dishes. Two of my favorites now that the weather is starting to warm up are cucumbers and cottage cheese. You may not thing of those two ingredients together, but they make the most delicious cucumber cottage cheese salad. For the moment I’m still relying on store-bought cucumbers, but the plants in my garden are starting to grow well and it won’t be long before the cucumber harvest starts.
And if last year is any indication of how things will go, we’ll be drowning in fresh cucumbers before long. I can’t wait 🙂
But back to the recipe. I had half a cucumber sitting in the fridge and there was some cottage cheese leftover that needed to be eaten. I started to play around using those two as my base ingredients and spicing it up a bit. The end result was a delicious cucumber cottage cheese side dish. I call it my cucumber salad with cottage cheese. It makes for a cool and filing lunch, but is also a nice addition to a piece of grilled meat or fish. Very filling without a lot of calories and low in carbs.
Below is my recipe using an entire cucumber and a full container of cottage cheese. This makes enough for a generous lunch serving or two or side for 4+. This stores well in the fridge for about a day. You may need to give it a good stir if you let it sit for a while.
Cucumber Cottage Cheese Salad
Ingredients
- 1 large cucumber
- 16 oz container of cottage cheese
- 1 tsp dried dill or 2 tbsp fresh dill (chopped)
- garlic salt to taste
- black pepper to taste (optional)
Instructions
- Cut your cucumber in half, then cut each section length wise. Use a spoon to scoop out the seeds. If you don't your salad will get pretty watery. Pay attention to how the skin of the cucumber feels. If it's tough, go ahead and peel it off. With tender skin, I like to leave it on. Just make sure you scrub it well, and if you're using a store-bought cucumber that feels like it's been treated with wax, spray or pour a little vinegar on it and rinse it off with plenty of water. That should get rid of most of it.
- Slice the cucumber and add it to a medium sized bowl. I use a glass bowl with a tight fitting lid If I think I'll have leftovers, or am making this ahead of time. Pour the entire container of cottage cheese on top. I prefer to use small curd, full-fat cottage cheese for this dish. It makes for a very filling lunch. But any type of cottage cheese will work.
- Add the dill and a good shake of garlic salt. Stir it all up and give it a taste test. Add more garlic salt if it needs it.
My husband loves a lot of pepper in this. I don’t. I skip the pepper when I make it and he adds it to taste to his portion at the table.
Variation: If you have some fresh garden tomatoes, remove the seeds and chop them up (small tomatoes can just be cut in half or quarter). Gently fold them in the finished cucumber cottage cheese mixture for a burst of flavor and a pop of color.
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