We made the viral cucumber salad

And no, it's not MSG.

Cucumber salad 2

My nightly 8pm social media scroll has now evolved into laying in bed watching every second person making a cucumber salad. There’s something wildly addictive about the way the cucumber is sliced, shaken and eaten – complete with the signature crunch – that makes me (and seemingly the whole internet) go to the supermarket, buy a cucumber and make this salad.

What is the cucumber salad trend?

We have one person to thank for this viral cucumber craze: the genius creator, Logan Moffitt (logagm). After his initial cucumber salad video – thinly sliced cucumbers shaken with soy, fish sauce, sugar, sesame oil, garlic, MSG, green onions and sesame seeds – he has created cucumber salad after cucumber salad (each racking up millions of views). 

Some are creamy, made with mayo, yoghurt, garlic, onion, dill, MSG and lemon, while others are peanutty, shaken with peanut butter, soy, garlic, chilli oil and rice wine vinegar. TikTok has shown us that the cucumber salad options really are endless, and the pure versatility of the humble veg may just be the reason they’re clogging up our feeds. 

Our version of the viral cucumber salad 

We went down the Asian-inspired salad route with our recipe, and it’s about as simple as it gets. With thinly sliced cucumber, crushed garlic, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, sugar, chilli oil – and the secret, flavour-boosting ingredient: Maggi Original Seasoning – it’s the perfect balance of salty, spicy and zingy.

Get our cucumber salad recipe here.

Our secret cucumber salad ingredient (and no, it’s not MSG)

Three words: Maggi Original Seasoning. This little bottle of goodness is an absolute flavour-bomb. It has the power to take a cucumber from a mid-tier vegetable (yep, I said it) to the best thing you’ve ever eaten. It’s the ingredient you add to a recipe that makes people ask what you’ve added to make it taste THAT good.

Many of the cucumber salads we saw floating around social media use pure MSG. It’s an absolute umami flavour-bomb, but it’s also quite hard to source. Enter Maggi Original Seasoning. You can easily find it in the supermarket and it’s a great replacement for MSG, while still delivering that hit of big savoury flavour.

And it’s not just us who are obsessed with this ingredient: Matt Preston is also a huge fan. He adds a few drops of this secret sauce in his chow mein and mayo. We also use it in seafood sauce and fried rice to give that well-rounded savoury flavour.  

As simple as they are to make, these salads come with a big warning: always use the mandoline’s safety guard when slicing. It’s worth digging it up out of the kitchen drawers  – trust us. Even the best of us have fallen victim to the slicer’s famously sharp blades! 

Don’t worry if you don’t have a mandoline, you can thinly slice the cucumbers with a knife, peeler or using a food processor’s chopping setting. As long as they’re thinly sliced, you’ll get the crunchy, cucumber salad vibe. 

And just like baked feta pasta, this is another TikTok trend that’ll be staying with us for life. 

Originally published as We made the viral cucumber salad