Cucumber Carrot Salad with Avocado Dressing

This light Cucumber Carrot Salad with creamy avocado dressing uses spiralized vegetables for a healthy, refreshing salad that can be a side dish or lunch topped with your protein of choice such as chicken, turkey, beef, fish, beans, a fried egg, crumbled bacon, and more.

The salad game at our house been revolutionized since we got a spiralizer! We got this small, handheld spiralizer from Amazon. I love that it is small enough to not take up a lot of space and it does the trick of turning vegetables into long spirals just fine.

Our favorite vegetables to spiralize have turned out to be cucumbers and carrots, so it only made sense that I would feature those in my first spiralizer recipe, this delicious raw salad. It contains lovely textured vegetables with a creamy dressing comprising avocado, yogurt, lime, cilantro, and more, and some crunchy pumpkin seeds for garnish.

Ingredients (& Substitutions)

• seedless cucumber
• carrots - large, equal amount to the cucumber
• avocado - ripe
• yogurt - plain, unflavored, unsweetened
• cilantro
• garlic clove - small
• sea salt
• lime juice - or lemon juice
• water - enough to blend smoothly
• pumpkin seeds - for topping

See recipe card for quantities.

Instructions

1. For the dressing, blend the avocado with the yogurt, cilantro, garlic, salt, lime juice, and water (as much is needed to get the right consistency) in a food processor or blender until smooth.
2. Clean the carrot and cucumber (and peel if desired). Using a spiralizer, spiralize the carrot and cucumber into spaghetti-like noodles. Then, cut the spiralized noodles into smaller strands. A julienne peeler works too.
3. Place the vegetable noodles in a bowl and top it with the dressing to taste. Sprinkle with the pumpkin seeds to finish.
4. The dressing is best fresh but you can cover it and store it in the fridge for 2-3 days.

Hint: Add the water to the dressing a little at a time to ensure you don't add too much and can control the consistency of the dressing easier.

Variations

This cucumber carrot salad is wonderful as-is, but a great thing about it is that it is incredibly versatile as well. Here are some ideas for how to change-up this salad.

• Add extra veggies: If you have some vegetables on hand that need to be used up, you can toss them into this salad. Simply add the dressing according to the volume of vegetables you have. Shredded cabbage, red bell peppers sliced into matchsticks, mushrooms, sliced red onion, spiralized zucchini, sliced celery, blanched green beans, olives, and handfuls of leafy baby spinach would all be delicious in this salad recipe. You could also serve it on a bed of lettuce like chopped romaine for an elegant presentation. This would be wonderful for a dinner party if you like.
• Make it spicy: If you would like to add a spicy flavor to your salad, consider adding a chopped jalapeño or two into the dressing. You can add the seeds too if you like your food to be extra fiery.
• Change the garnish: If you don't have pumpkin seeds in your pantry, you can top the salad with other seeds or nuts. Sunflower seeds or pecans, walnuts, pine-nuts, or almonds would all work well. You could even sprinkle the top with a few chopped chives or green onions if you have those on hand. These would add some extra flavor and color to your salad.
• Change the herbs: Rather than using cilantro in the dressing, which some people may not enjoy, you could add other fresh herbs like parsley, dill, mint, or basil.
• Add some cheese: For a little bit of a salty finish to the salad, you can either stir in or garnish it with cheeses. Crumbled feta or goat cheese, or shredded Swiss cheese, cheddar cheese, or gouda would all be amazing.

Storage

To enjoy the salad at the highest quality, I recommend that you eat it the day it is made, particularly since the avocado in the dressing may discolor over time. However, you could store the salad and dressing separately in the fridge for 2-3 days if needed. Simply cover them both or place them in airtight containers until you are ready to serve them.

Top Tip

The avocado cilantro dressing in this recipe is really awesome! It doesn't need olive oil or honey since it has the fat from the avocado and the complexity of the other ingredients. In fact, you can use it in other dishes even beyond this salad. I love the leftovers drizzled on rice and could totally see it being amazing on tacos, salmon, and pork.

FAQ

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Creamy Avocado Dressing slightly adapted from Pinch of Yum.