Oi Muchim
Korean cucumber salad: sliced, salted, squeezed and tossed with gochugaru, garlic and sesame — sharp, hot and crunchy, made in fifteen minutes.
Photograph credit: Oi Muchim 오이무침1 by Valenzuela400 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
Making Oi Muchim
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Slice the cucumbers into 5 mm rounds on the diagonal.
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Toss with the salt in a colander and leave 10 minutes over a bowl.
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Squeeze the slices gently in your hands and pat them dry. Do not rinse — you want the seasoning.
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Mix the gochugaru, garlic, vinegar, sugar, soy sauce and sesame oil into a paste.
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Toss the cucumber through the paste until every slice is coated red.
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Fold in the spring onions and sesame seeds.
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Serve within the hour, cold.
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Small Things That Help
- Salt and drain, then squeeze. Skipping it gives a watery salad in twenty minutes.
- Gochugaru specifically. Cayenne or ordinary chilli powder makes it hot and flat.
- Make it shortly before eating. This is a banchan, not a pickle, and it is best fresh.
Changing the Recipe
- Out of spring onions? A small regular onion, finely sliced, or a few chives stirred in at the end both cover the job.
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
What Goes With Oi Muchim
- Korean barbecue
- Bibimbap
- Rice and a fried egg
Keeping and Reheating
Refrigerate up to 2 days; it softens and the liquid separates, though the flavour holds. Drain before serving on the second day.
What's in a Serving
Per serving, an approximate calculation from the ingredient list. Treat it as a rough guide: part of the energy comes from foods, or weights per item, with no recorded source. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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