Pāi Huáng Guā (Chinese Smashed Cucumber Salad)

Smash your way to a fun, fast, fresh side dish with this kid-friendly recipe for Pāi Huáng Guā, or Chinese Smashed Cucumber Salad. You'll fall in love with the beautiful way it tastes, just like in The Ugly Vegetables.

By now, you've probably caught on that I love to garden. Everywhere I've ever lived, I've squeezed in pots of herbs, window boxes full of flowers, and as many garden beds full of vegetables as I can get away with in any sunny spot in my yard. If I had my way, I wouldn't grow grass at all, but veggies, fruit, and flowers as far as the eye could see.

While I love my beautiful flowers, the food is what I prize most. (Shocking, I know.) To grow something from a tiny seed, watch it flower and transform into the strangest of shapes, then turn it into dinner—that's a true magic trick! No vegetable is more delicious than the one you pick right off the vine, even if it seems mysterious (or even ugly!) at first, and no one depicts that better than artist and author Grace Lin.

About The Ugly Vegetables

When I was teaching in Boston, I always felt an extra spark of pride and excitement to share Grace Lin's books with my students, since she was a local Massachusetts author and illustrator who had just recently come onto the scene. The Ugly Vegetables was her debut book, publishing in 1999 to great acclaim.

Lin has gone on since then to write and illustrate over two dozen picture books, early readers, and chapter books for young and middle-grade audiences (with no sign of stopping anytime soon!), most of which feature Asian and Asian-American characters. She has spent her career advocating for diversity and Asian representation in children's literature—check out her amazing TEDx talk on the topic here—and she has been honored with Newbery, Geisel, and Caldecott awards for her gorgeous and impactful books.

And, as a bonus to me, Lin also clearly loves food! Many of her books explore Asian and Asian-American culture through food, as in Dim Sum for Everyone, A Big Moon Cake for Little Star, and Chinese Menu, all of which I know and love. But The Ugly Vegetables is still my favorite, telling the story of a little girl who's puzzled and dismayed by her mother growing unfamiliar, strange-looking, "ugly" Chinese vegetables in their garden.

Recipe Inspiration

"Why didn't we grow flowers?" I asked again.
"These are better than flowers," Mommy said again.
"I looked, but saw only black-purple-green vines, fuzzy wrinkled leaves, prickly stems, and a few little yellow flowers.
"I don't think so," I said.
"You wait and see," Mommy said.

—Grace Lin, The Ugly Vegetables

In The Ugly Vegetables, the mother in the story grows a whole array of Chinese vegetables in their garden, like bitter melon (kuu gua), luffa or silk melon (sy gua), Chinese leeks (jeou tsay), and Chinese cucumbers (sheau hwang gua), among others. After spending the summer feeling jealous of her neighbors' pretty flower gardens and sad about her family's ugly vegetable patch, the little girl in the story comes to see that her mother's special vegetables make a delicious soup that brings the whole neighborhood together.

While you might expect me to have worked on a recipe for Ugly Vegetable Soup inspired by this story, there are two reasons that I didn't: Firstly, Grace Lin already provides a wonderful recipe for the soup right on the last page of the book! And secondly, it can be hard to track down some of these special vegetables, especially where I live now in rural Maine, so I wanted to create another recipe that kids from all over could enjoy along with the story.

So, I took my inspiration from the description and illustrations of the Chinese cucumbers in the book to create a kid-friendly version of one of my favorite Sichuan recipes: Pāi Huáng Guā, which translates to banged, smacked, or smashed cucumbers. It's a fast, easy, no-cook salad that anyone can make, and it features lots of bashing, smashing, and tearing things to bits—what's more fun for a kid than that?!

I took my inspiration for a kid-friendly version of this recipe from one by Frank Tiu, a wonderful contributor I work with at Simply Recipes. I scaled it down to make it a manageable project for kids, and called to smash the cucumbers in a resealable bag to contain the mess, a technique we used in a similar recipe in a kids cookbook I worked on at America's Test Kitchen.

Smashing the cucumbers and then tearing them into bite-sized pieces creates a unique craggy, irregular texture that's perfect for a simple sauce to cling to. Plus, the process is really fun, and perfectly ugly-looking! Salting the cucumbers and draining them keeps the sauce from getting too washed out, and a drizzle of optional chili crisp or chili oil brings a little heat if anyone at the table likes things spicy. It's a quick, refreshing, ultra-crunchy salad that is just so fun for chefs of all ages to make.

Ingredients You'll Need

To make this Smashed Cucumber Salad, you'll need:

• Persian (aka mini) cucumbers: These little cukes have minimal seeds and lots of crunch. Their thin skins mean that you don't need to peel them before smashing. If you can't find them, a large English cucumber, cut into 3 to 4-inch lengths, will work as a substitute. If you're lucky enough to grow or find Chinese cucumbers, use those!
• Kosher salt: The large flakes of kosher salt cover the cucumbers more fully to draw out their extra moisture.
• Black vinegar: Chinese Chinkiang (or Zhenjiang) vinegar gives this salad lots of flavor. If you can’t find it, use 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar plus 1 teaspoon soy sauce as a substitute.
• Toasted sesame oil: This finishing oil brings lots of toasty, nutty depth to the salad.
• Granulated sugar: Offers a nice balancing sweetness.
• Sesame seeds: An easy topping that adds even more crunch to the salad.
• Chili crisp or chili oil: Diners who like a little heat can drizzle their individual portions at the table, but it's totally optional.

How To Make Pāi Huáng Guā (Chinese Smashed Cucumber Salad)

The full recipe with detailed timing and instructions for this salad is below, but here are some key moments to look out for along the way:

Why This Recipe Is Great for Kids

I've spent years writing cookbooks and creating recipes that are safe, fun, and engaging for kids and home cooks of all ages. Here are some key features of this recipe that make it perfect for kids and families to make together at home:

• There's no cooking and almost no knife work in this recipe, so there are very few safety concerns about hot or sharp elements. Even the youngest of chefs can give it a try!
• Smashing and tearing are fun! Kids aren't often encouraged to destroy things, so it's fun to have permission to get a little messy here.
• The pieces of cucumber can be whatever size and shape kids want—there's no need to be precise, and it can all be perfectly ugly!
• The recipe is a great way to encourage kids to eat vegetables in a flavorful, savory dressing.

Let's Cook!

Gather your equipment, measure your ingredients, and get cooking with this kid-friendly recipe! If you loved making it together, please leave five stars and share your stories in the comments.

Conversation Starters

While you are preparing this salad and when you sit down to enjoy it together, talk about what it was like to make the recipe and the themes in The Ugly Vegetables. You can help young readers make connections to the book and share your own answers, ideas, and stories with them with the following prompts:

• Did you like smashing and tearing the cucumbers in this recipe? Can you think of other recipes where you get to smash, bash, squish, rip, or tear something?
• Have you ever grown vegetables in a garden before? What have you grown, or would you like to try growing?
• Why do you think the little girl in the story is unhappy that her mother is growing "ugly" vegetables in their garden? What changes her mind?