How to eat cucumber best

There are many ways to eat cucumber. The most common ones are cold salad, stir-fry, and soup. Cucumber is a good vegetable. You can also use cucumber as a facial mask to whiten and beautify the skin. In my hometown, we often see that every household likes to pickle cucumbers. They are sweet and sour, moderately spicy, and can increase appetite. They are a good choice whether they are served with rice or porridge. So how do we make pickled cucumbers delicious?

Homemade recipe

Required Ingredients

Ingredients: 2 to 3 fresh home-made pickled cucumbers (they must be thorny to be tasty)

Seasoning: A. One spoon of salt

B. Five spoons of white vinegar, a piece of rock sugar (the size of a walnut), one spoon of honey, half a spoon of MSG, four dried red peppers (broken into small pieces)

Specific steps

1 Wash the homemade pickled cucumbers, cut them into small pieces about 8 cm long and as thick as fingers, put them in a clean container, stir them evenly with salt, and set aside.

2 Put all the ingredients in B into a small bowl, stir well, and leave until the rock sugar is completely dissolved.

3 After pickling the homemade pickled cucumbers with salt for about twenty minutes, a lot of water will seep out. Pour out the water and add the seasoning B just prepared into the homemade pickled cucumbers and mix well.

4 Place in the refrigerator for one day.

Flavor characteristics

It is sweet and sour, moderately spicy, refreshing and delicious, and it stimulates the appetite and helps digestion.

Key Steps

1 Be sure to use rock sugar and white vinegar, do not use white sugar and rice vinegar/aged vinegar, otherwise you will not be able to produce that refreshing taste.

2 When using salt to pickle homemade cucumbers, do not use too much salt, otherwise it will affect the final sweet taste.

3 This cold dish is marinated in the refrigerator, so it is especially suitable for summer consumption. According to my experience in Du Yichu, the effect will be better if the marinating time exceeds two days while ensuring hygiene. If you only marinate it for a day, it's already pretty good.

4 Unlike other cold dishes, this cold dish does not require sesame oil in order to emphasize the refreshing feeling without a drop of oil. [1]

Preparation method

Wash the cucumber and drain the water.

Wash the green peppers, cut them with a knife to make it easier to season, cut the ginger into large slices, and put the chopped cucumbers, green peppers, and ginger slices into a small bowl.

Pour soy sauce, star anise and cinnamon into the pot and bring to a boil over high heat.

After the boiled soy sauce has cooled completely, pour it into a small bowl containing cucumbers and peppers.

Heat another pan with oil and add Sichuan peppercorns.

Pour the cooked pepper oil into a bowl containing cucumbers and marinate them for 24 hours before eating. [2]

Tips

1. Wash cucumbers and green peppers and drain all the water.

2. When making soy sauce, you can add a small amount of water to reduce the salinity.

3. If the cucumber is large, you can cut it into slices and then cut it into long sections to make it easier to flavor.

Food taboos

1. The combination of home-cooked pickled cucumbers and peanuts can easily cause diarrhea.

2. When homemade pickled cucumbers are paired with peppers and celery, vitamin C is destroyed.

3. Home-made pickled cucumbers contain a vitamin C-degrading enzyme. In daily life, home-made pickled cucumbers are mostly eaten raw. At this time, the vitamin C-degrading enzyme it contains maintains a certain activity. If eaten with foods rich in vitamin C, such as peppers, the vitamin C-degrading enzyme in home-made pickled cucumbers will destroy the vitamin C in other foods. Although it is harmless to the human body, it will reduce the body's absorption of vitamin C.

Medicinal value

Toxicity: Low toxicity.

Nature and flavor: sweet; cool in nature.

Meridians: Lung, spleen, and stomach meridians.

Functions and indications: Clearing away heat; promoting diuresis; detoxifying. It is used to treat fever, thirst, short and dark urine, edema, oliguria, burns caused by water or fire, pityriasis versicolor, and non-sores.

Dosage and Administration: For internal use: appropriate amount, cooked or eaten raw; or squeezed into juice and taken. For external use: apply appropriate amount raw or mash it into juice for application.

1. Anti-tumor

The cucurbitacin C contained in homemade pickled cucumbers can enhance the body's immune function and achieve anti-tumor effects.

2. Anti-aging

Home-pickled cucumbers are rich in vitamin E, which can prolong life and resist aging; the pickling cucumber enzyme in home-pickled cucumbers has strong biological activity.

3. Lose weight and strengthen the body

The succinic acid contained in homemade pickled cucumbers can inhibit the conversion of sugars into fat.

4. Nourish your brain and calm your mind

Homemade pickled cucumbers contain vitamin B1, which is beneficial to improving the function of the brain and nervous system and can calm the mind.

5. Prevent alcohol poisoning

The alanine, arginine and glutamine contained in homemade pickled cucumbers have a certain auxiliary therapeutic effect on liver patients, especially those with alcoholic cirrhosis, and can prevent and treat alcohol poisoning.

6. Lowers blood sugar

The glucosides and fructose contained in homemade pickled cucumbers do not participate in the normal sugar metabolism. Therefore, when diabetics use homemade pickled cucumbers instead of starchy foods to satisfy their hunger, their blood sugar will not rise, and may even decrease.