Master sunomono, Japan's vinegared seaweed salad: the awase-zu dressing formula, properly salted cucumber, silky wakame and five smart variations.
Sunomono — su means vinegar, mono means things — is the quiet workhorse of Japanese side dishes: a small bowl of something crisp and something slippery, dressed in sweetened rice vinegar. The wakame-and-cucumber version takes five minutes once you understand the two techniques that matter: salting the cucumber so it stays snappy instead of watery, and balancing the awase-zu dressing so it's bright rather than harsh. This is the master recipe, the reasoning behind each step, and the variations that turn one bowl into a whole chapter of your cooking.
A good sunomono is a study in contrast. The cucumber gives clean crunch, the wakame gives silk and a low bass note of the sea, and the dressing ties them together with acidity, a little sugar and a little salt. Done carelessly, you get a puddle of diluted vinegar and limp vegetables. Done properly, each ingredient stays itself.
The dish's secret is osmosis. Salt draws water out of cucumber before the dressing goes on, so the vinegar you dress with stays at full strength and the cucumber keeps its snap for an hour or more in the fridge. Skip this step and you get soup by minute ten.
Wakame brings more than texture. It's among the mildest of the edible seaweeds — a good entry point if you're new to cooking with the sea vegetables — and our wakame species profile explains why this kelp-relative expanded so far beyond its native Japanese and Korean coasts.
Serves 4 as a small side. Ten minutes, plus ten minutes of salting time.
Once the master recipe is in your hands, the ratio frees you: 6 parts vinegar : 3 parts sugar : 1 part soy sauce, salt to taste, roughly 25 ml of dressing per serving. Scale it, double the sugar for the sweeter amazu style, or swap a little of the vinegar for homemade dashi to soften the acidity into the gentler evening version served in some households.
Watery sunomono. Almost always under-salted, under-squeezed cucumber, or wakame added dripping wet. Both ingredients must be wrung before they meet the dressing. If the bowl still waters out, your cucumber was unusually juicy — squeeze again next time with real conviction.
Harsh sunomono. Rice vinegar brands vary in strength. If the dressing tastes aggressive, the fix is a tablespoon of water or dashi, not more sugar, which only makes it sweet and harsh. And never substitute distilled white vinegar at full strength; if that's all you have, dilute it one-to-one with water first.
The format restaurants love: blanched octopus slices or cooked crab (or good surimi sticks) layered over the cucumber and wakame base. Add a little grated ginger to the dressing. This is where sunomono becomes a first course rather than a garnish.
Swap the wakame for silky mozuku, the Okinawan strand seaweed, for a more slippery, refreshing bowl — particularly good in hot weather. Our mozuku guide covers sourcing and its unusually mild taste.
Toast a tablespoon of sesame seeds, grind half coarsely, and work them into the dressing for a nuttier, richer bowl. A few drops of toasted sesame oil are welcome here but not in the classic version.
Swap a few teaspoons of the rice vinegar for yuzu juice (or lime with a whisper of grapefruit zest) and add fine shreds of zest on top. The citrus lifts the seaweed's iodine notes beautifully.
The technique, not the vegetable, is the dish. Thin-sliced salted daikon, blanched bean sprouts, shaved lotus root or rehydrated wood-ear mushrooms all take the same dressing. Keep one slippery element and one crisp element and you're in sunomono territory.
Sunomono is a palate-setter: serve it in small lacquered bowls at the start of a meal, alongside grilled fish, or next to rice and miso soup as part of a simple Japanese breakfast set. It pairs neatly with cold sake, green tea, or the ideas in our guide to drinking with seaweed.
It keeps, dressed, for about 24 hours in the fridge — the cucumber softens slightly but stays pleasant. For best texture, salt and squeeze the cucumber and soak the wakame ahead, keep them separate from the dressing, and combine 10 minutes before serving. And if seaweed is becoming a staple for you, our notes on buying seaweed well will help you pick wakame worth dressing, with sensible guidance in the seaweed nutrition overview on how these small mineral-rich portions fit into a week of eating.
Yes — blanched fresh wakame or other mild kelps work well. Blanch for 30 seconds, chill, squeeze dry and slice. Fresh gives a deeper green and a slightly firmer bite; see our guide to preparing fresh kelp for handling. Salt-packed (not dried) wakame from Asian grocers is also excellent — just rinse off the salt first.
Not quite. The bright-green restaurant "seaweed salad" is usually a dressed kaiso mix of several seaweeds, often pre-seasoned and sweetened. Sunomono is the vinegared style — sharper, lighter, and defined by its awase-zu dressing rather than sesame-oil seasoning. For the mixed-seaweed style at home, see our kaiso salad guide.
Squeezed dry and refrigerated in a sealed container, about two days. Once it's dressed in vinegar, aim to eat it within a day. Dried wakame in the pantry keeps for a year or more in an airtight bag.
No. Any thin-skinned, low-seed cucumber works — Persian and Lebanese cucumbers are ideal. With a large English cucumber, peel it in stripes, halve it lengthwise and scrape out the seeds before slicing.
The portion sizes are small — this salad uses about 2 g of dried wakame per serving. Wakame is moderate in iodine compared with kombu, and occasional servings like this suit most healthy people. If you have a thyroid condition, check with your doctor; our iodine safety explainer breaks the numbers down honestly.
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