Sunday, April 17, 2011

Frozen Cucumber Salad Recipe

My freezer needed to be defrosted. It had frozen over, and because of that, it was working extra hard to keep the fridge at a normal, cool temperature. I apparently lowered the temperature in the refrigerator because things weren't getting cold enough, but once I thawed out the freezer and the fridge was working better, I forgot to raise the temperature in the fridge...
After buying a large amount of produce, I discovered on Friday that my fridge froze a large amount of my veggies!!!

For some of these, I didn't mind so much that they froze, as I had been planning on freezing them anyhow.

For others, like the cucumbers and radishes, I was quite annoyed that they froze.

Being as I don't like to waste any food, but also don't like gross tasting or wrong textured food, I was unsure at first what to do with those cucumbers.

And then it hit me-


Cucumber salad!

Frozen cucumbers lose their crunch and become soft and wilty. They don't work so well in a standard vegetable salad, but in a plain old cucumber salad, they work terrifically!

If you ever accidentally freeze your cucumbers, there's two delicious ways to make them into salads that'll hide the fact that they weren't intended to be that soft.

Sweet and Sour Cucumber Salad
Mix vinegar or lemon juice with sugar and salt until you get a nice sweet and sour mixture. If you're using homemade vinegar, you may be fine with this dressing as is, but if you're using bought vinegar, you may want to water this down a bit. Add salt and pepper to taste, and then slice your frozen cucumbers really thin and place them in the marinade. Add a thinly sliced onion or two and let it sit for at least a few hours, ideally a day or two.
This recipe tastes so delicious, and using frozen cucumbers tastes no different than if you use fresh cucumbers for this salad.

Yogurt Dill Cucumber Salad/ Cucumber Yogurt Soup
Slice your cucumbers up really thinly. Salt them lightly, then mix with yogurt or sour cream, and dill (either fresh or dried, and to taste). Depending on how thick you want it to be adjust the proportions of dairy to cucumber. The longer you let it sit, the soupier it'll get. This is one of my favorite ways in the world to eat cucumbers!

What is your favorite cucumber recipe?
What do you do when you accidentally freeze your cucumbers?
Have you ever had your fridge freeze over and freeze things you'd wanted fresh? What did you do with the food? Toss it, or salvage it, and if so, how?

3 comments:

Thank you for leaving a comment on your blog. Comments are moderated- please be patient to allow time for them to go through. Opposing opinions are permitted, discussion and disagreements are encouraged, but nasty comments for the sole purpose of being nasty without constructive criticisms will be deleted.
Just a note- I take my privacy seriously, and comments giving away my location or religion are automatically deleted too.