5+ Budget-Friendly Cucumber Recipes

Simple answer: No, you don’t have to peel a cucumber.

Some people say cucumbers have a bitter skin, and that’s why they prefer to peel it. Personally, I never thought it was bitter.

Most of the cucumber is water, and many of a cucumber’s nutrients are in its skin. So eating the cucumber’s skin is a great idea — especially if you have cucumbers in your garden that you grow organically.

If you buy regular cucumbers at your local grocery store, you don’t know if chemicals or pesticides have been sprayed on the skin. So, our rule of thumb is if we’re eating the skin of fruits or vegetables (like cucumbers, tomatoes, etc.), we buy organic. If we’re not eating the skin (like oranges, bananas, etc.), we don’t buy organic.

If you want to save some money and buy non-organic cucumbers, but still want to eat the skin, that’s fine. Just be sure to clean it well with something like a veggie wash (or just really well in the sink).

Cucumbers are best fresh picked and eaten within the first two days of harvesting them. During that time, it’s best to store them at room temperature.

If you need to store them for longer than that, you can put them in the fridge, although cucumbers are subject to chilling injury at low temperatures. So, if you are going to refrigerate them straight from the grocery store, be sure to store cucumbers in the crisper bin or in the warmest part of your fridge (so not all the way in the back).

You can also wrap them in plastic (English cucumbers usually are sold this way) and put them in an airtight container in the fridge to prevent chilling injury (as much as you can, anyway).

If you’re growing an abundance of cucumbers, you’re probably wondering if you can freeze cucumbers. Good news, you can.

Wash (and peel, if you want) the cucumber. Slice it, then put it on top of parchment paper and put it in the freezer for at least two hours or overnight. Once the slices are frozen, you can put the in a freezer-safe bag and keep them in the freezer.

If you don’t freeze the cucumber slices first, they’ll all stick together.

Frozen cucumbers will thaw out with a mushy consistency, which is different than fresh cucumbers. So you will get the cucumber taste, but not the texture. Your best bet is to use frozen cucumbers in a sauce, like tzatziki, or infused water rather than a salad.

If you know me, you know I love gardening from scraps. I regrow lettuce from scraps every chance I get. You can do that with celery, green onions, and technically that’s how to grow potatoes at home too.

But not everything can be regrown that way, and cucumbers cannot be regrown from scraps. So you can’t just cut off the end of a cucumber, put it in fertile soil, and expect another cucumber.

If you read the tip above, you know you can’t regrow store-bought cucumbers by cutting off an edge and just planting that in dirt.

But, you can harvest some of the seeds from store-bought cucumbers, sprout them, and plant them.
We have a couple posts about that process (not with cucumbers, but with strawberries and spaghetti squash), so I don’t want to complete rehash those here, but here’s a quick tutorial.

When you’re slicing the cucumber, set aside some of the seeds that land on the cutting board. Rinse off any remaining cucumber flesh from them. Set them in a bowl and let them dry about a week. Place them in the center of a piece of paper towel. Put that paper towel in a plastic bag affixed to your window (or somewhere that gets great sunlight). Water them with a tablespoon or so of water every other day. When the seeds start to sprout, you can either transplant them to a small container until they are stronger or just put them directly into your garden.