If you are followed me for any length of time, you know that my Dragon Egg Cucumbers have gone crazy this year. One of the issues with such a bountiful harvest is how to keep it all from going bad. Traditionally, you pickle cucumbers to preserve them. This is less than ideal for a slicing cucumber though. I have made a ton of refrigerator pickles with my cucumbers but after 10 quarts or so, it is a bit concerning about how to eat all that. I also made a bunch of cucumber salads. This salad makes no sense. You do evil things to a cucumber that should make them mushy. Instead you have a floppy cucumber with crunch. It ain’t right but very tasty. From this preparation I found a fantastic way to get that cucumber salad in winter. Lets dig into my unexpected cucumber preservation method.

How I Discovered It?

I have spent about 20 of the last 35 days away from my garden. It is one of the big reasons for my Fall crop failures. If you aren’t there to water them, they tend to die. Because I am away so much, I needed to preserve a half made cucumber salad. I scooped up the undressed salad and stuffed it into a bag. Then it went to the freezer.

I got home from the first of my excursions and thawed my salad. It shocked me but the salad was nearly as good as fresh.

Basics of Cucumber Salad Preservation

The basics of a cucumber salad is to prepare the cucumber, salt the cucumber, wash it, squeeze it and finally, dress it. Yes, I said squeeze it. I know that seems wrong. I will show you how to prep it for the freezer.

This is a technique for preparing a cucumber salad picked up from Jacques Pipen’s Technique book. He does not freeze the cucumbers, hence the shock that this works if stopped in the right place.

Preparing the Cucumbers for Preservation

First, we need to decide if the cucumbers need to be peeled.

These are looking a bit rough around the edges so I am going to peel them with my trusty serrated vegetable peeler. A marvel of engineering that is appreciated too little in the modern world.

In addition the cucumbers, you will want some salt, a colander, a knife, a dessert spoon and if applicable, the peeler.

Cut the peeled or not cucumber in half lengthwise to expose the seeds.

Next, you want to take the spoon and scoop out the seeds from the cucumber.

Try to do this better than me since I was holding a camera and this is a two hand sort of task. Also do it over a sink. It makes cleanup much easier.

Do that over and over again and eventually you get this.

Now it is time to slice everything into roughly 1/4 inch slices.

Take the two halves of the cucumber and cut the ends off.

Line them up together and give them a few cuts.

Now it is time to dump them into a colander over a bowl or the sink.

Repeat until you get something that looks like a bowl full of cucumber slices.

Getting Salty with Cucumber Preservation

Now it is time to get the salt going. What we want to do is put a little salt on all the cucumbers. So salt and stir is the name of the game. There is no better tool for this than your hand.

Mix with your hand to get access to the unsalted bottom ones and stir the salt on the cucumbers around.

Repeat, it might take a couple of teaspoons of salt.

When complete, let them sit for a several hours. The salt will remove excess water from the cucumbers. It will also season the cucumbers.

At this stage, you can bag them and stick them in the freezer.

Currently, I am experimenting with washing the salt off before freezing but those results have not come back yet.

To Finish the Dish

Remove from the freezer and allow them to completely thaw. No cheating, because you are going to do some evil stuff to these poor cucumbers and half frozen ones will be a problem.

Put them back into a colander and rinse under cold water until all the salt is gone. Then find the person in the house with the best grip strength. Pickup a handful of the rinsed cucumbers and squeeze as hard as you can over the sink. It should give a nice little rain of cucumber water. Put those into a bowl. Repeat until you have no cucumbers left.

Finally, you are ready to dress. Choose your favorite salad dressing, I would recommend a mayonnaise, buttermilk or sour cream based dressing, and apply a couple of tablespoons until everybody has a light coating. It will be floppy, it will look like it has all the crunch of a noodle but it will remain crispy when you bite into it.

Why It Works

I think the reason why this works as cucumber preservation technique is that we are removing the majority of the water in the cucumber. With the seed removed and the flesh salted, the water is just gone. When the freeze happens I suspect there is not as much cellular damage from ice crystals because there is less water.

In addition, I suspect the cucumber does not freeze as deeply because of the salt in the flesh of the fruit. This keeps the crystals smaller. I suspect it also plays havoc on the shelf life so I can not tell you how long they will last in the deep freeze.

Not for sure those are the reasons but it seems to preserve them well from my experience.

Try at your own risk because I am not a food preservation expert but it has so far worked for me.