Cucumber recipes

This is a salad that tastes exactly like a hot August afternoon. The cucumber and watermelon share a clean, watery sweetness that pairs brilliantly with salty crumbled feta and the faint anise note of nigella seeds. It comes together in minutes and is genuinely one of the best things you can make with a garden glut of cucumbers.

This is one of those dishes that is far more than the sum of its parts. Cucumber is cut into thin noodle-like strips, then drenched in a tongue-tingling sauce of chilli oil, sesame paste, Sichuan pepper and black vinegar. It is fast, fiercely flavoured, and genuinely addictive — the cucumber stays crisp and cool against the heat of the sauce.

This is the cucumber salad that converts people who think they don't like cucumber salad. Smashing the cucumbers rather than slicing them creates jagged surfaces that soak up the punchy sesame and chilli dressing like nothing else. It takes under twenty minutes, needs no cooking, and goes with almost anything you are putting on the table.

Spiced lamb kofta hot off the grill, tucked into warm flatbreads with a generous amount of cucumber tzatziki — this is proper weeknight food that feels like a treat. The cucumber does double duty here: grated into the yoghurt sauce in large quantities, it is the cooling, creamy element that makes the whole dish. Fresh, abundant and genuinely satisfying.