How to pickle cucumbers

Everyone has eaten or seen cucumbers. It is also a common home-cooked dish. Cucumbers are usually eaten cold, stir-fried, or cooked in soup. The nutritious carotene and vitamin C they contain can stimulate the appetite, beautify the skin, and improve the body's immunity. We often see family members pickling leftover cucumbers. The pickled cucumbers are sweet and sour, crispy and especially delicious. So how do you pickle cucumbers?

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.

Food Benefits

Homemade pickled cucumbers are rich in nutrients such as protein, carbohydrates, vitamin B2, vitamin C, vitamin E, carotene, niacin, calcium, phosphorus, and iron. In addition, home-made pickled cucumbers can also beautify the skin: home-made pickled cucumbers can mildly dehumidify, tighten and eliminate skin wrinkles, and are especially effective for people with darker skin.