Trying to figure out what to do with our abundant first harvest of cucumbers did not lead to many options.
Ed will be fermenting a crock of cucumbers for canned dill pickles. He likes to use only "pickling cucumbers" when he does this. This left us with a pile of English cucumbers that we needed to figure out what to do with. We ate some raw and will continue to do so - but still - we needed to find something else.
I searched the internet for ideas and about the only thing I could find was a "cucumber stir fry" recipe which basically amounted to lightly sauteeing cucumbers with some onion then adding a little soy sauce, salt, pepper, and scrambled eggs. I made a big batch and it was amazingly good. I had never heard of sauteeing cucumbers; but, the light saute yielded a slightly sweet and refreshing resullt that proved quite complimentary with scrambled eggs. I have enough of my newly found concoction to last 3 days or so.
My grandmother used to make a cold cucumber salad with mayo, a little sugar, milk, salt, pepper, a dash of vinegar and some fresh sliced onions. I'll be making that for Ed and my dinner tomorrow and am actually looking very forward to it. I always loved her cucumber salad and this will be a walk down memory lane. Ed said he's open to trying the salad even though he's not a big mayo fan.
But, in terms of long term storage of cucumbers, it seems that pickling is really all there is. Dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, and pickle relish.
Today, I made pickle relish. I used the recipe from the USDA canning book and made a double plus batch. I used the English cucumbers that Ed won't be using when he makes his dills. It turns out, the English variety is well suited to pickle relish in that they are lower in seed / moisture content.
Both Ed and I sampled the relish and sure enough, it really does taste just like the relish you'd buy.
I use pickle relish when making egg salad, tuna salad, ham salad, and as a condiment on hot dogs and sausages; Ed, not so much. That said, we've got more than we'll need for the next couple of years so no more canning of relish for now. Tomorrow, I'll be pressure canning our first bean harvest...
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