Cucumbers are actively used in cooking, adding them to salads, soups, various snacks and sauces. They are also salted, canned and pickled. Cucumber is inferior to many vegetables in vitamin content, since it consists almost entirely of water. However, cucumber water is rich in mineral salts and biologically active substances.
Types of Cucumbers
To choose the right cucumbers in accordance with your goal, you should know that breeders divide them by the shirt – the surface of the cucumber. There are 3 main types of shirts:
– Eastern European with rare spikes on the surface (the marinade penetrates slowly, which makes the vegetable elastic and crispy);
– German with densely spaced spikes (brine gets inside quickly);
– Asian with a smooth surface and thick skin – good for salads).
Adding cucumbers to a salad, chefs often face the fact that the vegetable is bitter. Such bitterness is provoked by the glycoside cucurbitacin, which appears in a cucumber after a stressful situation (lack of water, an overabundance of sun, too high a temperature). But in order to still avoid buying bitter vegetables, you do not need to take too thick cucumbers with a thick skin and a dark green edge. Interestingly, cucumber grass can be used instead of cucumber in cooking (for example, in the season when there are no fresh cucumbers). This herb has a high nutritional value and contains vitamins. It tastes like cucumber with onion.
How to Make Drinks from Cucumbers?
Cucumber juice has a lot of useful properties, so it is recommended to drink it in its pure form. However, due to the refreshing effect that cucumber has, it is often added to various summer drinks. For example, a cocktail of lime and watermelon (200 g of watermelon pulp, 1/2 lime, 1/2 cucumber, a bunch of mint and water) or a smoothie of spinach and celery (grind in a blender: 100 g spinach, 1 green apple, 1 cucumber, 1 celery stalk, 1 piece of ginger, 2 tbsp lemon juice). Cucumber water is also popular (1 cucumber, 1 bunch of mint, half a lemon, 1 liter of water).
How to Choose Cucumbers?
In the summer, it is better to buy cucumbers in the morning, before they have time to lose their freshness, lying in the sun. If the cucumbers have already withered a little, then you can “revive” them by leaving them in cool water for 2-3 hours. By the way, soaking in cold water (about 30 minutes) promotes the excretion of nitrates. To heighten the effect, cucumbers should be put in a transparent dish and left in a bright place (the sun’s rays help accelerate the removal of harmful substances). The cucumbers purchased should be dense, without visible damage and yellow spots. When buying cucumbers out of season, you should pay attention to the unnatural shine. In general, the choice of cucumbers depends on your goal. Almost all cucumbers can be used for salad, but specially bred smooth fruits with a thick skin, about 13 cm long, are considered the most suitable. They have a rich aroma. You can take cucumbers with white spikes. The best pickled cucumbers are obtained from fruits 9-12 cm in length with dark spikes (they are easily removed when washing, which allows the brine to intensively impregnate the cucumber). For pickling, it is recommended to take cucumbers up to 9 cm in size (short-fruited gherkins) of dark green color with light tips or light stripes on the side. Fruits with dark thorns are also suitable.
How to Store Cucumbers for a Long Time?
As for the storage of fresh cucumbers, they can usually lie in the refrigerator for about 3-5 days. It is important to ensure that they receive air and do not store them next to ripe fruits and vegetables. To increase the shelf life to 10 days, they are put in a cellophane bag, covered with wet gauze on top and sent to the refrigerator. Cucumbers wrapped in paper towels and placed in an unopened bag can be stored in the refrigerator for about two weeks. In order for the vegetables to remain fresh for 3-4 weeks, they are dipped in cool water for 1-2 cm with their tails and put in the refrigerator. The water in the tank must be changed every day.
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