Sunday Dinner: The Attack of the Killer Cucumbers

[ritajr]

Help! We’re being overrun by cucumbers!



Our garden is very prolific this year. Especially the cucumbers.

Right now, at this minute, we have about 6 in our kitchen refrigerator, 6 in our garage refrigerator, and another 8 on the kitchen table. There are too many, too quick, and not enough ways to prepare them.

Here are my usual survival techniques.

1. Peel and slice them for salads.
2. Quarter them lengthwise and cut into 3-inch sticks for dipping.
3. Peel, slice, and marinate in oil and vinegar (with onions).
4. Peel, slice and toss with a homemade sour cream dressing.
5. Make pickles.
6. Give them to family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, the dentist, my hairdresser, and various passers by.

I’m on a mission not to allow a single cucumber to go bad this year.

It's August and so far, so good, but we can only eat so many. I’m going to need to store several of them long term.

The only way I know to preserve cucumbers is to make pickles.  Again, we can only eat so many pickles.  I was on a mission to find another way.

So I googled it: How to freeze cucumbers.
The consensus? You don’t.

Cucumbers, like other water-filled fruits and vegetables, turn to mush when defrosted.
That’s fine for tomatoes since you can make a dynamite spaghetti sauce in the winter with frozen garden tomatoes. But mushy cucumbers? That’s just gross.

However, I found two plausible ideas.

1.        Marinate them in vinegar and sugar and then freeze in side-dish sized portions.
2.        Cucumber soup - freeze the pureed soup before adding the sour cream or yogurt (add it when defrosted)

I plan to try both.

Here are a few links that might be of interest.

Cucumber Soup from Eating Well
http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/creamy_cucumber_soup.html

Cucumber Soup from Emeril Lagasse
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/cold-cucumber-soup-recipe/index.html

Freezing Cucumbers from Cooks.com
http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,1813,151181-253199,00.html