Though a fruit, cucumbers are mostly used as a vegetable, and many people refer to it as a vegetable, instead of a fruit. If you happen to like eating salads daily, then you should consider including cucumber in your salad due to its nutritious value. Cucumbers can also be included on the side of your plate to supply your meal with some freshness. Also, they can be taken solely or served with greens.
Several people add them to the dishes while cooking, especially when steaming vegetables or preparing stew. In whichever way you wish to eat them, you certainly want the cucumbers to maintain their fresh tastes. Your love for cucumber will force you to personally shop at grocery stores or an open-air market where you can get the freshest and juicy ones. Since you will have to shop in bulky, you will require a storage facility to help keep them fresh; and the fridge will serve the purpose in this case. The more the cucumbers stay in the fridge, the less fresh and juicy it gets. This may lead to wastage since one requires them to remain fresh to enjoy consuming them.
For those faced with this problem, there is an alternative of making the stored cucumbers in the fridges taste fresh, juicy, and crunchy. At one of the recently circulating Tik Tok video uploaded by @basicallyperfekt, she demonstrates how to milk the cucumbers to get their natural taste. She learned this from her sister-in-law, who on the other hand, had been taught by his husband’s southern grandfather. The skill she acquired from the lessons taught by her sister-in-law has received multiple views and likes meaning many people are eager to try it too. For your cucumber to regain its freshness, cut one slice from your cucumber and rub it off the tip of your fruit in a circular motion to its end. During the process, you will realize that foamy and milky stuff appears. This milking process will make your cucumbers less bitter, and you will enjoy your salad more. The presence of cucurbitacin compound in the cucumbers gives them a bitter taste; and the more the cucurbitacin component in the cucumber, the more bitter it gets.
Cucurbitacin is usually found in stems, leaves, and roots of various plants such as cucumbers and squash. Though rarely, this organic compound can also be in the fruits of these plants. For your cucumbers to taste juicy and crispy, rub the sliced end against your cucumber to get rid of the cucurbitacin and lower its bitterness level. Alternatively, peel its outermost layer since cucurbitacin is highly concentrated in the epicarp layer and beneath it. Apart from this natural way of lessening the bitterness in cucumbers, there is also another method of doing it without spreading cucurbitacin all over the cucumber. James M. Stephens, a professor in vegetable crops based at Florida University Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, advises that “You should start at the bottom end of the fruit and slice towards the end of the stem but stop at about an inch from the stem.” After completion of each slice, James directs you to wash your knife repeatedly until you are done. Thus, if you don’t like the bitter taste in cucumbers, use one of the two methods.
