My Garden Runneth Over

August 23, 2005 9:26 AM

Anything you can do with fresh cucumbers so you can enjoy them weeks or months later?

So, this year I finally have a rocking vegetable garden with the three things we like most: cucumbers, tomatoes (grape and regular) and bell peppers. I'm not a canner, so I'm just freezing the tomatoes whole to plop into stews, chili, etc in the future. I'm welcome to more suggestions than these 'red rocks' however.

My main problem is what to do with the cucumbers -- they're huge and prolific and it has been my understanding that water-based veggies don't freeze well. Any suggestions on what to do with them short of giving them all away?

Note: Suggestions gotta be on the simple side; the reason I don't do canning is cuz I don't have the patience for all that work, and don't really care to cultivate any (unless of course there's just no other option :( ).

Thanks in advance!

posted by thewhynotgirl to food & drink (22 comments total)

Pickle them?
posted by drezdn at 9:29 AM on August 23, 2005

You can shred them and freeze- these shreds later are good for beefing up the texture of red sauces, and for making moist breads, like spice or zucchini.
posted by headspace at 9:38 AM on August 23, 2005

Make orgasmatron cucumber salad. You just chop up some cukes and add a smattering of chopped onion. Put them in a bowl with some salt and pepper and a dash of really good vinegar, and another dash of good olive oil. Add a bit of fresh minced dill if you have it. I like lots of crushed black pepper on it. That same basic recipe is also excellent for tomatoes, by the way, but add basil instead of dill.

Also, have you ever tried cucumber sandwiches? You peel them and slice them thinly, and make a nice sammich, with salt and pepper and either butter or mayo. Toast the bread if you like. It's the sort of thing you might expect to see at a high tea, and it's very good. Cut your sammich into triangles and eat with your pinkies raised.
posted by iconomy at 9:39 AM on August 23, 2005

Or "pickle" them the fast and lazy way -- throw 'em in a tupperware with diluted white vinegar.
posted by desuetude at 9:40 AM on August 23, 2005

Mmmm... zucchini bread. Breads like that freeze well, too.

I'd have an all-day canning fest, myself. Invite people over and make a party of it. Then again, I'm still eating pickles and salsa from '97, when my parents had the same problem. (This from a garden that was less than 1/8th of an acre.) YMMV.
posted by strikhedonia at 9:45 AM on August 23, 2005

Yes, you can slice them up and leave them in vinegar. Actually quite tasty as a snack.
posted by fire&wings at 9:49 AM on August 23, 2005

Patience? Oh no, no, no. Easy - here is a recipe optimized for the impatient.
You will need wide mouth jars (available at your supermarket), a big pot, a small non-reactive pot, vinegar, salt, garlic and a dishwasher.

Put the 4 of the jars and lids and rings into the dishwasher and run a cycle without soap (I imagine you could also run it through the rinse and dry cycles).
Fill the big pot with emough water to cover a jar and bring to a boil, then drop to a simmer.
Meantime, put on to boil a 1:1 mixture of vinegar and water (you can use white or cider vinegar). For every cup and a half of water, add 1T plus a pinch of salt and 1T plus a pinch of sugar. Bring to a boil, stir until the sugar and salt are dissolved.
Pull the jars from the dishwasher.
Toss a couple whole cloves of garlic in each jar.
Wash and cut up your cukes so they'll fit in the jars.
Crank the heat on the big pot.
Fill each jar to within 1/4" of the top with the water/vinegar mix and lid them up. Carefully drop into the big pot and let them stay in the boil for 15 minutes for pint jars, 20 for quart jars. Shut off the heat, and carefully pour off the water. Set the jars ona towel to cool. Any that don't seal go into your fridge.

Bonus points: with the garlic, add a few whole pepper corns, dill seed (not weed) and a bay leaf. Use kosher or pickling salt to keep the pickles from discoloring.
Bonus bonus points: process at 180F for 30 minutes.
Total time: probably 1 hour if you're slow, and you can do clean up while the jars are boiling.
Standard home-canning practice: use your eyes and nose before you taste: if it looks off or smells off, throw it out. Processing times are from Montana State University.
posted by plinth at 9:56 AM on August 23, 2005 [2 favorites]

Oh and to add to the cucumber sandwhich, try spreading a mix of "lite" cream cheese dill and salt on the inside of pita bread, stuff with sliced cucumbers, tomato, red onion and alfalfa sprouts.
posted by plinth at 9:58 AM on August 23, 2005

Thanks for all the ideas!

Not sure I wrote it clearly, tho -- I love cuke sandwiches and salads, but want to be able to enjoy them later as well -- believe me, you can only eat so many while the garden keeps sending them and sending them!

Also, thanks l-o-o-o-o-o-o-a-d-s for the easy canning methods :)

Is there a way to can/freeze so that they still taste like cucumbers, though, instead of pickles? I'm looking in my fridge at 23 lbs. of pickles already, for my pickle loving family and would love to keep the cucumber taste instead so I can do stuff like sour cream cucumber salad in a couple of months ...

The shred/bread ideas seem best in this regard. Please do let me know if there are other ways. Thanks again!
posted by thewhynotgirl at 10:24 AM on August 23, 2005

I vote for giving them away. Canning/freezing/pickling is all well and good, but you get to the point where enough's enough. (23 lbs of pickles already?!?! Good god!) My mom is still making pies with frozen pumpkin from the 1980's...Thanksgiving has become a chorus of, "Oh, is this the 1987? Excellent year for pumpkins..."
posted by junkbox at 10:33 AM on August 23, 2005

Wow, I had no idea canning was so easy, and I too thank plinth for the easy instructions!

But I admit that I'm scared of canning. I'm afraid I'm going to give myself botulism or something. Is it possible to discuss the safety of canning using the plinth method, and to know how long pickles canned this way can be stored? Also, since I don't have a dishwasher, is it ok to just pre-boil the jars and lids?

I hope this isn't too much of a thread hijack, but perhaps thewhynotgirl could use the safety information too?
posted by hazyjane at 10:35 AM on August 23, 2005

This is my first summer canning, and I've got in the neighborhood of 120 pints under my belt (we're canning veggies from our garden as table favors for our wedding guests [19 days!]). I can testify that boiling water canning is incredibly easy and safe, as long as you're canning foods with a high-acid content (i.e. - pickles or relishes or anything with vinegar added such as salsa). You can pre-boil the jars, but don't boil the lids - just keep them in some hot water or the seal will ruin. I just put the jars in the rack of my canning pot, crank the heat, cover, and let them get nice and hot (after washing them, obviouosly).

However, don't know of any way of keeping them tasting like cucumbers through canning, since the vinegar is a "must" for the boiling water method. I can't vouch for the pressure-cooker canning method, as I haven't tried that . . .
posted by tr33hggr at 11:11 AM on August 23, 2005

After finding ourselves in much the same boat as thewhynotgirl, we found that cucumbers work surprisingly well in stir fries. Cut them lengthwise, remove most of the seeds, and fry as you would zuchini. I haven't tried freezing them first, but I'd suspect the texture wouldn't suffer too much if you were going to fry them afterwards.
posted by MrMoonPie at 11:28 AM on August 23, 2005

Followup on plinth's canning post.

My mom does the same, except she boils a towel in the bottom of the big pot as well, so that the jars are less likely to bounce around and break.
posted by Kickstart70 at 11:33 AM on August 23, 2005

Right, if you don't have a canning rack you'll need something at the bottom of the pot, to keep them from jostling around and to keep the direct heat off the glass bottoms.
posted by tr33hggr at 11:36 AM on August 23, 2005

Here's a 'cucumber freezing' link for you -


I doubt you'll find much that will preserve the fresh taste. They just get too mushy.
posted by LadyBonita at 11:49 AM on August 23, 2005

I once accidentally froze a cucumber (it's a long story). When I discovered and removed it, it defrosted into cold green mush. Not nice.
posted by Lotto at 2:01 PM on August 23, 2005

Hey-you're welcome. I'm going to get meta and try to explain why I wrote the recipe as I did.

I skipped a lot of the typical things in recipes that scare off people doing canning for the first time. You don't need a canning kettle, you don't need special funnels, thermometers, tongs, etc. You don't even need to buy canning jars, you can recycle/reuse old jars if you want (note on this later).

So I optimized: how can I make pickles so that 1. they keep at room temperature safely 2. you don't need to buy much 3. the time to make them is minimized and is uncomplicated 4. set up time amounts to a trip to the grocery store for jars, and ingredients that are likely to be in any house.

From my own experience, you don't really need a canning rack or a canning kettle (although old-fashioned hardware stores tend to carry them cheaply). The towel is a great idea--probably one I'll use next time, but I've done it without. The only things a canning rack does for you is make it easy to pull the hot jars out while they're hot and keep the jars from jostling, but even at a rolling boil, it's really not a big deal.

With regards to safety in canning: I trust the numbers above. If I were home, I'd look up the numbers in my Sunset cookbook for canning and preserving, but I bet they're the same--FYI if you're at high altitude do a web search to find the boil time for you. The only thing I'd be slightly leery about is using the dishwasher to sterilize, but since you're making pickles, which need process canning for long-term storage, anything pathogenic will get killed anyway. Also the dry cycle in most dishwashers heats things up enough to steam off the water. That ought to do it.

If you don't want to do dishwasher sterilizing, you can do what's in the Joy of Cooking which is to put the jars in a tall-sided skillet and put a couple inches of water in the jars and put a couple inches of water in the pan. Set the lids on loosely and bring to a boil. Keep at a low boil until you're ready to go. I also dunk the lids in boiling water last minute. Using these two methods, I've made gallons upon gallons of pickles, jams, jellies, and chutneys. For the latter 3, I don't water process since the cooked fruit is already sterile and is going into the jar boiling hot. In all my experience, I have had 1 jar of Apple Butter go bad (mold) and three jars that didn't seal, and no problems at all with pickles.

And by the way, being scared about poisoning yourself is reasonable, just be aware that food preservation is pretty much as old as people. You can make pickles without even heat processing them because of the nature of the brine, since most of the pathogens don't like the acidity of the brine.

Notes:
Reusing old jars: if clean and sterile, you can reuse old jars and lids. Inside of each lid is a rubbery gasket which deforms a little when sealed up. It may not seat perfectly the second time around. Oh well-that just means that the lid isn't popped down. Put it in the fridge. Pick jars that match standard replacement lid sizes (like Classico spaghetti sauce) and you can just buy lids and rings.
Salt: iodized salt (table salt) will discolor food, kosher salt and pickling salt will not.
Temperature: 180F and longer time will keep the color and texture better than a boil
Non-pickling preservation of cukes: I'd be reluctant to do cucumbers, but I'll look it up later
Pickling spice: I don't care for the supermarket blend. I think it's too sweet.
Other things to try: I've pickled garlic on it's own in 4 oz jars. It's even better if you put a dried red cayenne pepper in each jar or 1/4 tsp of red pepper flakes. Fantastic instead of an olive in a martini.
posted by plinth at 2:17 PM on August 23, 2005

And one more note: I checked my canning guide and it specifically says to NOT can cucumbers in anything but pickles.
posted by plinth at 5:18 PM on August 23, 2005

I use a dehydrator on the cherry tomatoes, makes sort of a pseudo-sun dried tomato. Very tasty and a good way to keep the tomatoes for months without the canning/freezing thing.
posted by yodelingisfun at 6:26 PM on August 23, 2005

Alton Brown (who I trust in all these things) did a great episode about how to make your own pickles. You could probably even find the episode on a bittorrent site somewhere, but the easiest thing is to read the transcript of his show American Pickle where he explains, how and why to pickle. You don't need any new gear to pickle, and it's fun and good.

Alton also did an episode on canning, specifically jamming which also may be of interest to you.
posted by geryon at 7:38 PM on August 23, 2005 [1 favorite]

You guys were great. I've marked headspace and plinth with gratitude, and I guess that shows what I'll be doing this weekend!

I'll never say never, so if I (or you) ever find a method preserving that cucumber taste, I'll be happy to share.

Meantime, I've no more worries about my abundance, and I'll let those I give 'em to in on the suggestions, as well.

WhyNot!
posted by thewhynotgirl at 2:03 PM on August 24, 2005