Chikuwa Cucumber is one of the easiest and quickest dishes you can make in order to fill up the empty space in your bento box. You can also use blanched okra.

When you need just one more dish to fill up the empty space of the lunch box, Chikuwa Cucumber comes in handy. Chikuwa is a Japanese fish cake and is used in many dishes such as Oden (Fish Cake Stew) and Chikuwa Isobeage. The best part is that preparation only takes a few minutes. Enjoy!

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Chikuwa Cucumber
Ingredients
- 1 Japanese or Persian cucumbers (You can also use blanched okra; use thin pieces)
- 1 package chikuwa (fish cake) (5 pieces)
Instructions
- Cut the cucumber to the length of the chikuwa fish cake. Peel cucumber skin in a stripe pattern.
- Cut the cucumber into thin sticks so that they will fit the chikuwa hole. If your cucumber has many seeds, remove them. Stuff the cucumber stick inside chikuwa.
- Cut each chikuwa cucumber in thirds or quarters. You can also cut diagonally for the look.
[…] Here’s the recipe for Chikuwa Cucumber. […]
Nami, just to clarify, we can eat chikuwa straight from the package? So if I freeze chikuwa, I don’t have to cook it, just defrost it?
Hi Aubrey! Yes, chikuwa is already steamed and packed, so you can eat out of package, or heat up if you prefer. 🙂
Any idea what I could replace fishcake with ? This is a very good idea and I’d love to add something like this to the bento I make, but I don’t have a place to buy fishcake around me :/
Hi Joy! Usually Asian stores carry these in frozen section (Japanese grocery store in fridge section). I can’t think of any other food that has a hole in the middle…. do you? If you have some good ingredient to replace the chikuwa (fish cake), it would be great! 🙂
Wow. That’s the fastest side dish I’ve ever seen!
I don’t call this a “recipe”… LOL!