Hi, I'm Dr. Josh Axe and welcome to my kitchen. This week we're going to be making cucumber
salsa, which is great on a hot summer day. It's also great served over fish, over chicken,
and the other great thing about this recipe, it's super colorful and it's really good in terms of presentation.
So the first thing we're going to start off here with are some grape tomatoes. I'm going
to just walk you through cutting these. So what we're going to do simply is you'll take
the grape tomatoes, cut them in half, like so, pretty simply, and then we're going to
just throw them in the bowl. Tomatoes are great because they're full of lycopene, and
lycopene is a natural antioxidant. It actually protects your skin against sunburn, helps
your body fight cancer, so a lot of benefits there with those tomatoes. Also, lycopene
has been shown to help male prostate.
The next thing we're going to do here is cut up some cucumber. So we'll start slowly chopping
that. First we're going to chop it into thin slices, like so. Some of the health benefits
of cucumber, actually the biggest thing that cucumber is good for, it has silica which
is really great for your skin. So if you're a person out there who has any sort of problems
with your complexion such as acne, or even problems with sun spots on your skin, it's
good for that as well, and also good for electrolytes. So if you're a person that works out a lot
and it's a hot summer day and you're sweating quite a bit, it's good for that as well.
So you'll see I'm basically cutting these cucumbers here. We're going to get them cut
into quarter-like slices, like so, and flip them around here. Okay, we've got our cucumber
done and ready to be added into the salsa with the tomatoes.
Now we're going to add in a little bit of jalapeno pepper, which is great for your metabolism.
So it's great for metabolism, losing weight, and if you just like a little bit of a spicy
taste, it's great for that as well. So we're going to cut a little bit of this jalapeno
pepper and add that in to add just a little bit of spice. There we go, and then we're
going to chop it up just a little bit more into a few thinner slices. Add that on in.
The next thing we're going to do is add in some bell peppers. Bell peppers are really
good because they're full of vitamin C. Actually of all foods, they're one of the highest foods
in vitamin C which has been shown to help fight cancer, fight disease in general, and
if you're sick, vitamin C is one of the most important nutrients you can be adding in your
system and eating. Now these colored bell peppers, such as red, orange or yellow, also
have what's called beta-carotene, a similar thing you're going to find in oranges or pumpkin,
and another phytonutrient antioxidant that's going to help your body in terms of anti-aging.
Also, the other good thing that beta-carotene is good for, it's also good for your eyes.
It's got a lot of good vitamin A in it, which has been show to help glaucoma, just overall
vision over the span of your lifetime. So we're going to add in those bell peppers there.
The next thing we're going to do is add in garlic. Garlic contains a nutrient called
allicin, which is helpful for fighting off infections. Specifically, it's a natural anti-viral,
natural anti-bacterial. So if you're ever sick, I recommend actually eating at least
two to four cloves of garlic a day. And so if you're sick this is a great recipe as well.
If you're trying to kick something fast, we've got the bell peppers with all the vitamin
C, we've got the garlic here that's going to help kill off the bad bacteria and fungus,
so it's good for that, and similar benefits in onion. Also onions have sulphur, which
will clean out your arteries. That smell you have in onion is sulphur, which is a natural
detoxifier.
The next thing we're going to do is add in a little bit of parsley. Parsley is great
for good breath, and so after eating all the garlic in this dish you'll want some parsley
because that will help even out against some of the bad breath you have after eating the
garlic. But again, parsley is great. It's also a very powerful antioxidant and one of
the most nutrient-dense food you can eat being very high in vitamin K. And so we've got some
parsley here. We just chopped it finely and we're going to add that into the mix here.
The other thing we have is cilantro. Now, cilantro is a very powerful detoxifier. It
actually binds to heavy metals in your body, including lead, mercury and aluminum. You
can actually do this in several ways. Actually with cilantro, another thing you can do is
always juice it. One of the things, I like to is just eat it in my food. It adds a lot
of good flavor, but again, a natural metal detoxifier in cilantro. Also, we're going
to add a little bit of dill which is high in antioxidants. So we're going to sprinkle
about a half of teaspoon of dill in there.
And then we're going to add in Celtic sea salt. And we use Celtic sea salt, or rock
salt, because it's higher in minerals and trace minerals, specifically. And so we're
going to add about a teaspoon or so of this Celtic sea salt.
And the last thing we're going to do is add in lime. So we're going to get some lime juice.
I'm just going to cut the ends off the lime here, and then we're going to . . . actually,
just go ahead and cut it in half, and then we're going to squeeze this juice out of the
lemons here, or rather the lime here. You're going to take it and squeeze it. And there's
other ways to do this. You can also just get a lime or lemon press. But again, you get
a little bit of lime juice in there. So take it and squeeze it. Lime is great because it's
full of vitamin C as well. It's full of vitamin C, it's also alkalizing to your system so
it helps reduce acidity. It's a great thing to do after a workout. So now that we've got
that added in there, you can take your hands or take a couple of prongs and simply just
start kinda mixing it all together here.
This is just a beautiful dish. You've got the red, yellow, orange, green, white color,
just all together here blended beautifully. There we go. Well, we have this cucumber salsa.
And again, this is great served over chicken, over fish. It's great in the summer, but it's
super nutrient-dense. Another thing you can do is you can always take rice crackers, even
bell peppers and dip them in here, but again, a great super nutritious recipe. This is cucumber
salsa.