I Tried This Hack for Reviving Sad, Limp Cucumbers — Here’s How It Went
If you’re a fan of making all different kinds of salads at home, then you likely have a wide variety of fruits and vegetables stored on your counter or in your fridge right now. Dishes like this Mediterranean-style chopped salad and this tangy cucumber avocado salad are great because they’re full of flavor and they highlight the best of crunchy, fresh vegetables — including cucumbers.
On a slightly less exciting note, however, if you happen to let fruits and vegetables like cucumbers sit for too long, they tend to lose their usual crisp texture (read more on the best way to store cucumbers). While they’re often still edible, you just don’t get the same signature texture you’re used to.
Not too long ago, Too Good to Go, a mobile app service focused on fighting food waste, posted a video on Instagram Reels demonstrating how to revive cucumbers that have gone soft. The method is simple: Simply slice them lengthwise into wedges and place them in a jar or tall glass standing upwards. Fill the jar with water all the way to the top of the cucumbers and stick the jar in the fridge. After about a day or so, you should notice the cucumber slices have become crisper than before.
How This Cucumber-Reviving Hack Went
After being amazed by how the method seemed to work in the video, I had to try it for myself. In my experiment, I used two different types of cucumbers: English cucumbers and the traditional, thick-skinned cucumber available at most stores. I sliced each of them into long wedges, placed them in a tall food storage container, and filled it with water in the evening and place it in the fridge without the lid.
Around noon on the following day, I went to test the crispness of the cucumbers. The standard cucumbers were noticeably crisper, but I didn’t notice much difference in the English cucumbers. (Perhaps the thickness of the skin or texture of the flesh explains this difference.)
That said, I still think this hack is worth using — especially for your average grocery-store (or farmers-market) cucumber. Kitchn contributor Patty Catalano also likes to use this trick for carrots, and a dip in cold water can help revive salad greens and herbs.
If you have English cucumbers that have lost their snap, however, I suggest using them in dish where their texture isn’t a factor, such as cold cucumber soup, a smoothie, or to make cucumber water.