How to Store Cucumbers to Last for Weeks
Perhaps the smell of fresh cucumbers transports you back to pickling in your grandmother’s kitchen, or the crunch offers vivid garden-snacking nostalgia. Brimming with nutrients like potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, and vitamin C, these water-dense veggies shine as the star of a cold cucumber salad, a refreshing addition to your ice water, or sliced into matchsticks and enjoyed in your favorite sandwich.
Cylindrical in shape and robust in flavor, cucumbers act tough & self-sufficient until sliced into. Because they’re not often consumed entirely in just one sitting, it’s important to know how to protect & preserve them. Their shelf life depends entirely on how they’re stored!
Cucumbers are veggies that frequently come pre-wrapped in plastic at the grocery store or farmer’s market *cringe*. Plastic may be one of the worst ways to savor cucumbers. Our advice? Rescue it from the airtight & suffocating environment and wrap it in Abeego for crying out loud! They’ll stay crisp & refreshing for what feels like forever.
Keeping cucumbers alive with Abeego isn’t magic; it’s nature. Cucumbers are alive and need to breathe, and Abeego lets them do exactly that. Made with beeswax, tree resin and jojoba oil infused into a hemp and organic cotton cloth, Abeego is protective, breathable, and opaque. Do these qualities sound familiar? That’s right; they’re the qualities of every skin, peel, and rind found in nature! Nature does it best.
CUCUMBERS IN THE TEST KITCHEN
Our Method
We took the two ends of an English cucumber AND a Field cucumber, weighed them, wrapped one entirely in Abeego, and left the other naked. We then put them in the crisper drawer of the fridge for two whole weeks.
Our Results
- After two weeks, the Abeego-wrapped Field cucumber lost 2.5% of its weight, while the naked Field cucumber lost 17% of its weight.
- After two weeks, the Abeego-wrapped English cucumber lost 6% of its weight while the naked English cucumber lost 29% of its weight.
On average, the naked cucumbers lost more than 5x the amount of weight than the Abeego-wrapped cucumbers, which were still firm, dense, and looked like the end had just been sliced.
The naked cucumbers were shrivelled and dry. Especially apparent on the English cucumber, notice how the sliced ends closed in on themselves? The poor cukes were trying to save their own life!
In an entirely different and accidental experiment, Abeego Founder, Toni Desrosiers, noted the difference between cucumber wrapped in Abeego (the top cuke) versus cucumber wrapped in airtight plastic (the bottom cuke). The plastic caused the cucumber to sweat, build up excess moisture, and turn into squishy spoiling mush.
Our Why
Abeego picks up where the peels leaves off. Without protection, cut cucumbers are exposed to excess air that sucks away their high water content, and in turn, their nutrients. When trapped in airtight plastic wrap or a plastic bag, cucumbers start to sweat and become slimy, moldy, and mushy. In Abeego, cucumbers are able to release their oxidizing gases while still being protected from air, light & moisture.
HOW TO STORE WHOLE CUCUMBERS
Ditch the paper towel or the airtight container full of cold water. Cucumbers thrive when stored in an environment that mimics their own skin. While their forest-green peel is hearty, they benefit immensely from an extra layer of protection from Abeego.
Reach for your Large or Medium Abeego and wrap the whole cuke.
Bunch of minis? Fold your Giant into a bag and keep them crisp & contained!
The saying “cool as a cucumber” certainly rings true for these babies. They like to be cold, so avoid the room-temperature kitchen counter and refrigerate them instead.
HOW TO STORE SLICED CUCUMBERS AND CUCUMBER SLICES
Sliced and diced? Wrap directly in Abeego or place in a bowl and cover.
Only the end sliced off? Reach for your Small Abeego and cover only the cut surface. Trust us; it won’t even notice it’s been cut!
Why risk it? Don’t let your next cuke be the one that got away. Abeego it & breathe easy knowing you can enjoy delicious & nutritious cucumber for what feels like forever.
CUCUMBER TIPS, TRICKS & RECIPES
- Planting cucumbers in your garden? Get creative with the trellis! Fun fact: Toni’s cucumber trellis is made from her daughter’s old crib!
- Preserve cukes for months with Imperfect Food’s Cucumber Fennel Pickles recipe
- Add some heat to cold cucumbers with Eat Cho Food’s Cucumber & Radish Chili Oil Salad
- Craving soup in the summer? Try Feasting at Home’s Cooling Cucumber Gazpacho.
SHOP ABEEGO & KEEP CUCUMBERS ALIVE
It is with deep respect and gratitude that we create, build and operate our business in the communities of Southern Vancouver Island, which as a business we acknowledge is located within the ancestral and unceded territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) (Esquimalt and Songhees), Malahat, Pacheedaht, Scia'new, T’Sou-ke and W̱SÁNEĆ (Pauquachin, Tsartlip, Tsawout, Tseycum) peoples.