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Healthy Cucumber Recipes and Cooking Tips

A cucumber, food historian Waverley Root once wrote, is “about as close to neutrality as a vegetable can get without ceasing to exist.” He must not have tried the right ones. From crisp kirbys to nearly seedless greenhouse cukes, there are plenty of alternatives to the thick-skinned types that typically dominate supermarket bins.

While the cucumber isn’t known as a nutrition powerhouse, it does provide a small amount of fiber, minerals and vitamins—particularly vitamin C (about 6 percent of the Daily Value per cup). But perhaps its most important nutritional contribution is refreshment: at 95 percent water content, a cup of cucumber slices is nearly as thirst-quenching as a glass of water. Just thinking about cukes makes us feel cooler.

If your cucumber repertoire is limited to tossing slices into green salads, here are some simple inspirations that reach beyond.

• Chile-Crusted Scallops with Cucumber Salad
• Creamy Cucumber Soup
• Cucumber & Black-Eyed Pea Salad
• Cucumber Raita
• Japanese Cucumber Salad
• Quick Pickles
• Tropical Cucumber Salad
• Salmon with Cucumbers & Dill
• Parsley Tabbouleh
• Spinach Salad with Black Olive Vinaigrette
• back to top

For more great cucumber recipes, use our Advanced Recipe Search

TIPS

Picking Cucumbers

Cucumbers are available year-round in supermarkets. (1) The English or European greenhouse cucumber, often sheathed in plastic wrap to protect its very thin skin, and the (2) American slicing cucumber, which has a slightly thicker skin and more seeds, are the most common. Don’t overlook other varieties like the (3) pickling cucumber (a.k.a. kirby) and (4) Middle Eastern slicer. There’s even a “burpless” variety of cuke: read more below...

The Burpless Cuke

Do cucumbers make you burp? For some of us, this may be a new concept, but it may sound all too familiar to others. Before you decide to write off the cucumber forever, perhaps you should consider a “burpless” variety. A study published in HortTechnology in 2000 measured the burp potential of three different cuke varieties including the lesser known oriental trellis, often marketed as a burpless cucumber. Over three consecutive days, judges were given an undisclosed variety of cucumber and then were instructed to rate the burpiness level on a scale of zero (no burpiness whatsoever) to nine (extreme burpiness).

What did they find? If you’re susceptible to feeling burpy after munching on this refreshing summer vegetable, sticking to this variety may indeed be a good solution. Judges gave the oriental trellis a rating of 1, while the American slicer received quite a different burp report, scoring between a 3 and a 3.5.

The conclusion? To advertise a cucumber as completely burpless seems like a stretch, as it is still unclear exactly what it is in cucumbers that makes you burp, but if you are one of the few stuck revisiting your lunch after taking a few bites of that pesky little cucumber, then a burpless variety may just be worth the investment.

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