Foreigners use rolling pins to make smashed cucumber! Netizens: You know nothing about Chinese cuisine

Cucumber salad is a must-have home-style dish on Chinese tables, especially popular in summer for its simplicity and refreshing taste. This well-known side dish in China has now taken the world by storm.

On a New York restaurant’s menu, the cucumber salad is described as “addictive.”

Recently, a British-Chinese mixed-race guy brought his British wife and mother-in-law to the BBC food show, where he demonstrated a few Chinese home-style dishes: braised pork belly, smashed cucumber, salt and pepper tofu, and rice.

After watching it, I just felt like… it’s hard to put into words…

The method for making braised pork feels Chinese, but not quite!”Isn’t braised pork supposed to be like this?!?!”

And what about this smashed cucumber? Wait, using a rolling pin to beat and smash the cucumber—isn’t the style a bit too rough?Foreigners’ earnest explanations are also convincing.

After watching this, I almost believed it. Were all the smashed cucumbers I ate before fake?

After tasting the food, several food critics said they were amazed! This sparked a hilarious discussion among netizens—

You know nothing about Chinese cuisine…

I always thought cold cucumber salad was made by smashing the cucumbers, but I never expected there to be a massage method…

If you don’t smash the cucumber with a knife in one go, it’ll get sad!

If this counts as delicious, then any Chinese chef could make them fly with joy from the taste!

Simple and rough is the best way to eat—don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Let’s experience this incredibly springy smashed (blown) cucumber together ↓↓

Actually, the simple and easy-to-learn smashed cucumber has already become popular abroad, with a fancy English name—smashed cucumbers.

As early as 2015, smashed cucumbers had conquered the taste buds of American foodies and became a trend in New York.Traditional Chinese smashed cucumber salad is mostly seasoned with soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil, and vinegar. In northern China, chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns are also added. However, American restaurants take a different approach to this dish, giving it a distinctly local twist.

The methods of preparing smashed cucumbers vary across American restaurants. Some follow the Chinese way, smashing the cucumbers directly with the flat side of a knife, while others take a Japanese approach, using a wooden mallet or rolling pin (foreigners have a peculiar obsession with rolling pins)—

At Boivine’s Mexican restaurant, they add a rich sesame paste to the smashed cucumbers, which contains lime, cumin, and oregano;

At the Whitney Museum’s “Untitled” restaurant, they toss smashed cucumbers, radishes, and tartare tuna with soba noodles;

At Ippudo Ramen, the cucumbers are lightly smashed and seasoned with sesame oil and garlic to create “addictive sesame oil cucumbers”;

The most unique preparation, however, comes from Super Burger—sous chef Goldberg mixes jagged cucumber chunks with tangy yogurt, then sprinkles a little Mexican green chili sauce and sesame stick breadcrumbs on top, resulting in a rather “dark” appearance…

Foreigners with peculiar tastes have already turned some cucumber combinations into daily staples.

The sour and tangy crushed cucumber + yogurt combo【Cucumber Salad + Yogurt + Sesame Baguette Crumbs】combo born…The last thing I ever expected was that they’d even go after our Lao Gan Ma! [Cucumber salad + yogurt + sesame breadstick crumbs + Lao Gan Ma chili oil]Why not grab a bowl of ‘82 Lafite spicy cucumbers?

As a big foodie nation, you’d really be too embarrassed to name your hometown without a couple of killer specialties up your sleeve.

If foreigners see a sloak cucumber, they’d probably kneel in awe~

But, knife skills like the one below are truly impressive!

Cutting potatoes? No cutting board needed at allRadish? Silk flower? Can’t tell them apart.A butcher dissecting an ox is probably just like thisPaper-thin yet untearable slices of meatPaper-thin lotus root slices”Needle-threading” shredded potatoesThe legendary “Wensi Tofu”This is what they mean by “one cleaver to rule the world”!

Gotta say, being born in our great China is truly a blessing for foodies!Supervisor: Yu Weiya
Editors: Wang Zhao, Zhao Gang
Interns: Bu Kuntong, Han WenjunBorn in Greater China, happiness lasts a lifetime!