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Come summertime, chefs and home cooks everywhere are especially excited—like, really excited—about tomatoes. Tomato tarts, sandwiches, and pastas galore! While we can’t deny that tomatoes are great, there’s also a lot to love about their summer salad sidekick, the cucumber. Cucumbers, which bring coolness, crunch, and a refreshing bite to salads, sandwiches, and even stir-fries, can really make your summer meals pop. Plus, they’re delicious to snack on with a dip or on their own. But because cucumbers are full of moisture, they can turn your meals into a soggy, waterlogged mess. Luckily for us, there’s a simple solution to this problem: salting your cucumbers.
Why You Should Salt Your Cucumbers
Salting your cucumbers initiates the process of osmosis, which expels water from the cucumber's cells while simultaneously enhancing its flavor. As Serious Eats contributor Tim Chin wrote in his guide to brining vegetables, the salt “diffuses across those membranes and seasons the vegetables deeply.” People often think of cucumbers as bland and watery, but depending on the variety, they can be sweet, pleasantly bitter, and even savory. Salt helps cucumbers release their moisture, but, just as importantly, highlights the nuanced flavors we might otherwise miss.
It’s a technique our editors and contributors rely on. “When I make cucumber dips, I always pre-salt cucumbers to draw out moisture before stirring into the dip, so the excess moisture doesn't thin the dip as it leaches out over time,” says senior culinary editor Leah Colins.
Culinary editor Genevieve Yam, who despises a soggy salad, frequently salts her cucumbers to prevent her meals from becoming a puddle. And Chin employs this technique in his stir-fried cucumbers and mushroom recipe to help the cucumbers properly sear instead of turning into mush.
How to Salt Your Cucumbers
You've heard of “set it and forget it,” but what about...salt it and forget it? Salting your cucumbers is such a low effort task that all you need to do is season them, walk away, and let osmosis do the hard work for you. Do it at the beginning of dinner prep, and by the time you've gathered all your mise en place, your cucumbers will be ready to go.
You’ll want to use about half a teaspoon of Diamond Crystal kosher salt for every pound of cucumbers you’re preparing. (Use a quarter teaspoon if using table salt.) Wash and slice the cucumbers, place them in a colander set over a large bowl or sink, then salt them. (You may want to lightly toss them to make sure the cucumbers are evenly coated) Let the cucumbers sit until they begin to release their water, about five to 10 minutes. Some people like to rinse the salt off or dab the cucumbers dry afterwards, but whether you choose to is entirely up to you. If you do rinse them, just be sure to drain them well so you're not adding even more water to your final dish after working to remove moisture—because that would defeat the whole purpose of salting them in the first place.
