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No More Wasting of Cucumbers; Check New Ways to Store Them

Some creative ways to preserve vegetables and crops without pickling them.

Updated on: 30 October, 2021 10:33 AM IST By: Anju M U
cucumber preservation

If your yield gives you more than you can eat at once then what to do? Obviously, you look for ways to store it? Either you put it in a refrigerator or make its pickle. 

But keeping in the fridge gives you a very limited number of days or week for its survival. Preserving every harvest in form of pickles might also make people exhausted. Moreover, canning them would not always live up to your expectations. This is why there must be some creative ways to preserve vegetables and crops for longer days.  

Like tomatoes and courgettescucumbers are also short-lived vegetables. They are harder to preserve as it has high water content. That's why, cucumbers need to preserve a little harder than fruits and other vegetables. 

It must be noted that the Indian Agricultural Research Institute had recently launched 4 Popular Varieties of Cucumber for the farmers

How to preserve cucumber? 

Cucumbers below the temperature of 45 to 50 might damage the crop. Thus in order to store fresh cucumbers, it is good to wash and dry thoroughly. Later wrap them each in separate aluminum foil to stop moisture accumulation. The cucumber then can be kept in an open and plastic bag. 

Storing cucumbers by freezing them is also possible. There are two ways to freeze the cucumbers, depending on how you have to use them in the future.

In the first method, wash and dry cucumbers thoroughly. If you need peeled cucumbers, peel them before freezing. Then, slice the vegetables and put them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Later, keep them in the freezer for several hours. Then, you can put them into a plastic Ziploc bag and label them before storing them in the freezer. 

In the second method of freezing, the initial steps are same as the cucumbers are to be washed and dried thoroughly. This method is to keep cucumbers in freeze mode with ice cubes. After the cucumbers are sliced, put them into ice cubes in the tray. Later, the cucumbers are needed to be put in the freezer. The cucumber ice cubes after it is frozen can be stored in plastic bags. 

Do you know that you can easily grow cucumbers at home and eat fresh salads every day. 

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