Sprinkling These Pantry Staples On Cucumbers Keeps Them Crunchy Longer

From crisp summer salads to your favorite classic dill pickles recipe, the cucumber is often the star of the show when you're craving a mild, refreshing crunch. The great thing about choosing cucumbers is that you can easily test their firmness. Unfortunately, once you begin slicing them, you may face the common challenge of keeping cucumbers crunchy. There are a few tricks to solving the problem, and two of them are already in your pantry: salt and sugar.

Cucumbers are refreshing because they're essentially 96% water. Once cut, all of that moisture needs somewhere to go. When you mix cucumbers with other ingredients like salad dressing, the process of osmosis will draw out the moisture and potentially turn your recipe into mush. The key to keeping cukes crisp is to remove the water content before you use them. You may be familiar with using salt to extract moisture from other vegetables, like zucchini or eggplant, but adding some sugar along with the salt has some added benefits, including offsetting the bitterness and enhancing the sweetness.

To easily prep your cut cucumbers and remove water content, layer them in a colander and add a good-sized pinch of salt and sugar to each layer. For a recipe that calls for very crisp cucumbers (like this spicy Korean cucumber salad recipe), allow the salt and sugar mixture to sit on the cucumbers for up to one hour. Thoroughly drain and rinse the cukes, and you're ready for the next step.

Choosing quality cucumbers will help ensure you're getting a firm vegetable before you begin your recipe. Tips for crunchy homemade pickles start with picking the freshest cucumbers possible. Look for firm vegetables with no soft spots or wrinkles (a sign that they've begun to dehydrate). A good cucumber should be dark green all the way through, with no yellowing. Ensure that the cucumber is uniform in size without any lumps, as this might indicate a pocket of seeds.

Once you've chosen your cucumbers, try soaking them whole in ice water for a few hours. This will help keep them firm until you're ready to use them. Don't store the cucumbers with other vegetables if you can help it. Certain veggies like apples, avocados, and tomatoes produce an ethylene gas that will actually cause cucumbers to rot faster.

One key to preventing soggy cucumber salad is to simply remove all of the seeds. Seeds hold the bulk of the cucumber's water, and depending on the recipe, scraping them out might just be your best bet. Finally, skip the salt altogether and try a sugar soak. Cut cucumbers into 1- to 2-inch pieces and toss them in a bowl with a few tablespoons of sugar. The sugar alone will slowly draw the moisture away from the cucumbers while shrinking them slightly, creating a firmness. Let the cukes sit in the sugar for three hours, drain the water, and place a plate with a weight on the cucumbers to extract as much moisture as possible.