It's cucumber season! I know you know how to cut a cucumber - if you can read a blog you for sure can cut a cucumber - but here's a fun way to spiral cut it to make your salad, cucumber and life a little more interesting.
Yes. This is where we are in life. At least this is where I am. I am now of the age where I have done all the traditional things that add excitement to life like white water rafting and eating foods past their expiry date. Now I must reinvent vegetable chopping as a form of entertainment.
So far from the garden I've been picking zucchini, broccoli, lettuces and a few beans. Tomatoes will be ready any second now and I harvested garlic last week.
My pickling cucumbers are starting to produce which means my english cucumbers will soon follow.
But when the cucumbers get to be picking size they're all going to come in at once and I won't know what to do with all of them. One girl only has so many uses for a cucumber.
You can pickle them, slice them, dice them and add them to a salad. But it gets boring. Which means one of two things. You can start whomping strangers waiting at the bus stop over the head with them, which would be loads of fun, or ... you can grab a potato peeler and have fun with them that way.
Table of Contents
Fun way to cut cucumbers
Come summertime even one cucumber plant produces enough to feed an entire neighbourhood. So ... there's always the threat of getting sick of cucumbers. Try this little trick to put the fun back in cucumbers.
As they say, you eat with your eyes first so if all you're doing is slapping together some lettuce, radishes and cucumbers you may as well fool everyone into thinking it's more than what it actually is. Even if it's just for yourself.
I don't do this all the time for just myself but most of the time I do. I serve and prepare my food all pretty-like. Why wouldn't you do this for yourself?
Just because one is living alone doesn't mean one has to slop their food onto a plate like they're living in an 18th century jailhouse. Unless you're having a theme night.
How to Slice a Cucumber the Fun Way!
Zip around your cucumber with a vegetable peeler for a thinly sliced spiral pile of cucumber!
Materials
- cucumber
Tools
- vegetable peeler
Instructions
- Slice the end of your cucumber off straight with a knife or vegetable peeler.
- Starting at the cut end, using your vegetable peeler, peel in circles while rotating the cucumber all the way around continuing until your spiral breaks or you get to the end of the cucumber.
- The longer you can go without breaking the spiral, the more impressive your spiral pile will be.
Now that I have you intensely interested in new and exciting ways to use your vegetables I feel compelled to delve further into the world of cucumbers. Stylistically speaking.
How do you cut cucumbers for dipping?
This is an issue I have. Most dipping vegetables come with a built in handle don't they? Cauliflower, broccoli, carrots and celery all have built in handles. They have stems or they're stiff enough to have a good enough grip that they won't slide out of your fingers while performing the very important SINGLE dip.
When in company, you know you cannot double dip. Even if you want to. So that first dip had better be epic. It has to provide you with enough dip to satisfy the entire hunk of vegetable you're dipping.
That's hard to do with a flimsy slice or stick of cucumber. So here is my advice for slicing cucumbers for dipping.
- Don't peel the cucumbers. The skin gives the cucumber some strength to power through even the thickest dip.
- For thick cucumbers, slice them across into rounds around ¼" thick.
- For smaller, or thinner cucumbers cut the cucumber into 3" lengths. Cut it in half lengthwise, then in half again so you have 4 equal sized quarters of cucumbers that are 3" long.
How do you cut a cucumber into thin slices?
The same way I show you here. With a vegetable peeler. But if that isn't giving you the desired effect put the peeler away and move over to the knife drawer.
Again, leave the cucumber skin on if you want thin slices but you aren't completely confident in your knife skills. Keeping the skin on prevents the knife from slipping and makes the cucumber less mushy when slicing.
Use a sharp knife. A chef's knife with a wide blade will make the job easier than trying to use a small knife. With a wide knife you'll make it through the vegetable in one pass while using a small knife with a narrow blade will make it feel like you need to saw through the cucumber. That will make an ugly, uneven slice. The kind of slice they'd serve in that 18th century prison.
But the BEST way to thinly slice a cucumber (or anything) is to use a mandolin. This is the one I have and I don't like it. It was supposed to be the absolute greatest mandolin in the world! The best! The very best! It's kind of awful.
The blades are so thin they're flexible so if you put any extra pressure on it you end up with thicker slices than you want. The blades are embedded into plastic that isn't level with the steel blade so the cuts aren't smooth and the thing is huge. So don't buy this mandolin. It's almost $100 and just doesn't work well.
My mothers antique mandolin that has zero safety features on the other hand works great. But they don't sell anything like it anymore what with the zero safety features.
This is the best reviewed mandolin on Amazon, so if you're looking for one it's probably a good choice and half the price of the one I bought.
Happy peeling.
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I'm probably never going to do that, I don't care...'cause you're so funny....
Nancy Ann
Well thanks. Now it's my life MISSION to get you to do this.😂 ~ karen!
Love your site! Cannot believe it has taken me so long to find it (coming from an OLD foodie).
I am sure I will be making many return trips for the food, fun tips and your "interesting" comments.
Hate the ads, but I understand.
Another fun way to cut cucumbers is with a Scandanavian cheese slicer - the kind with a wooden handle that gives you very thin pieces of cheese. It also does that with cucumbers and it works really quickly.
That’s what I learned from my mom. We’re Swedish! Gotta love that cheese slicer, also known as a cheese plane! Add sugar and vinegar, then put put a weight (eg: a saucer with a mug on it) for an hour. Stir in chopped parsley and serve chilled.
What a great idea! I'm not really creative but I like to try different things. And I will definitely try to cut cucumbers like this! Thank you for the great video!
Fun!! Love your videos--they're so entertaining. I wonder how many other of your readers are, like me, having visions of pizza ovens in their heads. When I was jogging tonight, I kept thinking, when will I build it? and where will I put it? :)
My 3 year old is going to love this!
When I was a kid I used to grate cheddar cheese & snack on it slowly. Like a whole bowlful. I also like to eat Hickory Sticks one at a time.
Where did you find your pizza peel? We could really use one - sliding pizzas off a cookie sheet is not the best method! But they are rustic & interesting. Recently one was shaped like New Brunswick.
LOL! Well that kindda sounds fun. :) My wood pizza peel is actually an antique. Well ... as antique as a pizza peel can be, lol. It's one solid piece of wood and it's HUGE. My smaller 12" metal pizza peel is from Chris' Store Fixtures here in town, but you can get them online. Amazon probably! ~ karen
Nice! I have been looking for an old wooden one, almost seems impossible to find. Guess I could go to Dayco or Hendrix - the two restaurant supply stores out this way.
Totally off topic...I just received in the mail today three of the wooden cracker jar lids that I ordered from Brenda at Cattails Woodwork! They are just gorgeous and so well made! I may have to bring the sugar and flour out of the pantry and put them front and center in my kitchen! Really classed up the cracker jars!
Karen, I'm a Pampered Chef consultant and what you need is the Spiral & Slice - get the same job done without having to first use your apple corer and it's a lot more fun, and I think faster too - here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cEOlAsS0o8
Shauna is right, Karen. Buy that little bugger...it is so YOU!
I saw the topic was cucumbers and I thought you were going to work porn in again the way you did with yesterday's post. This site warps me.
Mostly, I'm just amazed at how you seeded that cucumber! WHY have I never thought of that myself? I use them diced in salads frequently, and they need to be seeded first. Life-changing. Seriously.
I always say that..."we eat with our eyes"....so I LOVE this post! I bought a paderno spirilizer thinking it would be SO MARV! but it's just OK.......this would have been cheaper and less bulk in my cabinet. I do like zucchini made into strings of pasta-ish looking stuff though! lol
Been gone for a month so I have some posts to catch up on! After I catch up on all the STUFF I gotta do on the back 40! YIKES!
Hey Barbie. Where ya been? I'm going to make a zucchini lasagna this summer and see how it goes. I"m a bit frightened by the prospect of NO pasta so I may do a 4 layer lasagna with 2 mandolined zucchini layers and 2 pasta layers. ~ karen!
*kicking myself for not planting cucumbers this year*
In my defense... we were supposed to be moving. Said move has - yet again - been postponed and the silly rural supermarkets are devoid of cukes this summer, for some strange reason.
Ah well... your curly cukes look nice. I will keep this in mind for when my cucumber hunt bears fruit, since I happen to like 'pretty food'. :-)
Thanks Karen! Love this idea.. Can't wait to show it to my 5 year old! Maybe she'll eat her veggies. ;).
Interesting comments today. I guess one could marinate "pile -o- cukes". I enjoyed the face time today and a peek more of your kitchen ha ha ha or was that on purpose??? You ARE such a tease.
You can! I've pickled them like that and they're good, but aren't quite as firm obviously so they slump a little, lol. ~ karen!