Cucumbers are cool and crunchy, however all that moisture can result in soggy salads and watery dips. The repair? A fast pre-salt. Salting attracts out extra water by way of osmosis, retains textures crisp, and enhances the cucumbers’ pure taste—whether or not candy, bitter, or savory.
Come summertime, cooks and residential cooks all over the place are particularly excited—like, actually excited—about tomatoes. Tomato tarts, sandwiches, and pastas galore! Whereas we will’t deny that tomatoes are nice, there’s additionally loads to like about their summer time salad sidekick, the cucumber. Cucumbers, which deliver coolness, crunch, and a refreshing chunk to salads, sandwiches, and even stir-fries, can actually make your summer time meals pop. Plus, they’re scrumptious to snack on with a dip or on their very own. However as a result of cucumbers are stuffed with moisture, they will flip your meals right into a soggy, waterlogged mess. Fortunately for us, there’s a easy resolution to this downside: salting your cucumbers.
Why You Ought to Salt Your Cucumbers
Lynn Wolsted
Salting your cucumbers initiates the method of osmosis, which expels water from the cucumber’s cells whereas concurrently enhancing its taste. As Severe Eats contributor Tim Chin wrote in his information to brining greens, the salt “diffuses throughout these membranes and seasons the greens deeply.” Individuals usually consider cucumbers as bland and watery, however relying on the range, they are often candy, pleasantly bitter, and even savory. Salt helps cucumbers launch their moisture, however, simply as importantly, highlights the nuanced flavors we’d in any other case miss.
It’s a way our editors and contributors depend on. “After I make cucumber dips, I at all times pre-salt cucumbers to attract out moisture earlier than stirring into the dip, so the surplus moisture would not skinny the dip because it leaches out over time,” says senior culinary editor Leah Colins.
Culinary editor Genevieve Yam, who despises a soggy salad, incessantly salts her cucumbers to forestall her meals from turning into a puddle. And Chin employs this system in his stir-fried cucumbers and mushroom recipe to assist the cucumbers correctly sear as a substitute of turning into mush.
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Stir-Fried Cucumbers With Trumpet Mushrooms and Torch Hei
Salt Your Cucumbers
You’ve got heard of “set it and neglect it,” however what about…salt it and neglect it? Salting your cucumbers is such a low effort process that each one it is advisable to do is season them, stroll away, and let osmosis do the arduous give you the results you want. Do it firstly of dinner prep, and by the point you’ve got gathered all of your mise en place, your cucumbers shall be able to go.
You’ll need to use about half a teaspoon of Diamond Crystal kosher salt for each pound of cucumbers you’re getting ready. (Use 1 / 4 teaspoon if utilizing desk salt.) Wash and slice the cucumbers, place them in a colander set over a big bowl or sink, then salt them. (Chances are you’ll need to flippantly toss them to ensure the cucumbers are evenly coated) Let the cucumbers sit till they start to launch their water, about 5 to 10 minutes. Some individuals prefer to rinse the salt off or dab the cucumbers dry afterwards, however whether or not you select to is solely as much as you. When you do rinse them, simply remember to drain them nicely so you are not including much more water to your closing dish after working to take away moisture—as a result of that may defeat the entire goal of salting them within the first place.