Crab and Cucumber Sunomono is a salad with fake crab meat and sliced cucumber marinated in a rice vinegar sauce. This salad is so easy to make with simple ingredients, in a matter of 10 minutes. It is also healthy, with no fat, delicious, and a wonderful side dish for Bento lunches and dinner.
Sunomono is Japanese salad, with vegetables and seafood marinated in a sweet vinegar sauce/dressing. The most well-known Sunomono is Cucumber and Wakame Seaweed Sunomono. The Sunomono sauce has no oil, unlike western salad dressings, so it is a pretty healthy thing to eat on a regular basis.
The crab we used in the recipe is imitation crab, formed into a soft stick, which is often used in California Roll. Imitation crab, Kanikama in Japanese, is made from fish to simulate the taste, texture, and signature look of crab, white meat with a red lining outside. It vaguely tastes like crab, but it is good enough for certain dishes. And Kanikama is significantly cheaper than real crab meat, which is very nice for budget-minded people like us. Although you can use real crab meat from a fish market or canned crab for this dish, that may be saved for more special occasions.
It is extra helpful if you have a good mandolin slicer when making Sunomono. It literally takes no time to cut cucumbers with a slicer, and we highly recommend it. Crab and Cucumber Sunomono is such a simple refreshing side dish which goes with any kind of main dish. Hope you try it soon!
Crab and Cucumber Sunomono
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Ingredients
- 1 Japanese cucumber or 2 Persian
- 3 sticks imitation crab
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 Tbsp rice vinegar
- 2/3 Tbsp sugar
- 1/4 tsp Soy Sauce
- 1/2 tsp sesame seeds
Instructions
- Slice cucumbers as thin as you can. Stir in salt, and let sit for 5 minutes. Squeeze water out from cucumbers.
- Pull apart crab sticks into thin strings
- In a small bowl, mix rice vinegar, sugar, and soy sauce together until sugar dissolves. Add vinegar mixture, sesame seeds, and crab to prepared cucumbers and mix well.
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