How To Distinguish Salad Cucumbers From Pickled Cucumbers?

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Everyone knows what cucumbers look like. But does everyone know how to distinguish salad cucumbers from pickled ones? By the way, the ability to identify some qualities of cucumbers by their appearance is a very valuable skill, because not always what we expected from purchased seeds grows. How to distinguish salad cucumbers from their counterparts intended for pickling? It turns out that this can be done on several grounds at once

Pulp and skin

When we want to compliment pickles, we cannot help but note that they are not only delicious but also crunchy. And how crisp the cucumbers turn out depends entirely on the pulp of the fruit, more precisely, on its density. The denser the flesh of the cucumbers, the more attractive their pickling characteristics will be.

The peel also plays an important role - it is in it that fat-like substances accumulate, absorbing and retaining essential oils of spices added to pickles during salting. The thickest-skinned cucumbers have the highest holding capacity. And the aroma of such cucumbers will be much richer!

The main advantage of thick-skinned cucumbers is their ability to be salted not immediately, but gradually, which in turn allows you to preserve not only their structure, but also valuable nutritional properties.

Bumps with villi

Any summer resident knows that cucumbers on the beds do not look as smooth and smooth as on store counters or on our tables. All cucumbers growing in the beds are covered with tiny thorny villi that can help gardeners identify the most important qualities of the fruit. These fibers are designed to regulate moisture evaporation. They all differ in a completely different shape (they can be either conical or simple) and different colors (there are black, brown and even white villi). The darkest villi are endowed with the lowest evaporating ability. As for the coloring pigment that gives them a similar color, it slowly spreads along the surfaces of cucumber cells, noticeably restraining the instant penetration of brine into the fruit. Conical villi have a similar ability.

Thus, we can conclude that cucumbers with conical black villi will have the best pickling qualities (by the way, cans with such conservation almost never explode). And the villi of the best salad varieties will be simple and light.

It is also important to know that cucumbers endowed with dark villi will turn yellow much faster than their light-fleecy neighbors in the beds. But the cell sap during salting will come out of them much more slowly, and the fermentation process will not be as intense, therefore, such fruits usually do not form voids, undergo deformation to a much lesser extent and remain crisper and denser.

And now a little about the tubercles - it turns out that they are also capable of influencing the pickling qualities of cucumbers. As it turned out, cucumbers with large tubercles are considered the most suitable for pickling.

How to choose pickles for pickling?

For pickling, it is best to choose relatively small cucumbers - fruits from ten to thirteen centimeters long are ideal for this purpose. It is desirable that all of them differ in the correct shape - crooked cucumbers will not be the most suitable option.

It is also important to pay attention to the color of the cucumber skin. It is better not to take overripe cucumbers with yellowed skin for pickling: they have such coarse seeds and peel that hardly anyone wants to eat such a blank. The best option would be fruits with a juicy green peel - everyone will like this preservation!