Cucumber
The Right Way to Store Cucumbers (So They Don't Turn to Mush)
Learn how to keep your cukes fresh and crisp for as long as possible.
Cucumbers are easy to find year-round, but they’re really at their peak come summer (May through August). Once you get home from stocking up on them at the farm stand, grocery store, or even a grocery delivery service like Instacart, which you can shop here, it’s important to know how to store cucumbers. If you take care of these green gems properly, they should last up to a week. Ahead, we’re sharing our top tips for storing cucumbers the right way.
Shopping for Cucumbers
Before you grab any cukes off the shelves (we’re close enough that we can give them a nickname, right?), choose carefully. The best cucumbers will be pure green (not yellow) and have no soft spots. Any signs of wrinkles, shrinkage, or dimples signal that the cucumber is overripe. Overripe or rotten cucumbers will have a sour taste and funky smell, so, unlike overripe bananas or apples, which are great for baking, pass on past-peak cucumbers.
How to Store Cucumbers
According to the Hmong American Farmers Association, your average supermarket cold cucumbers are generally coated with a food-grade wax that makes them safe to store in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator for up to 1 week, uncut. Unwaxed cucumbers, which are the kind that you’d pick in your own garden, are best when used within 3 days.
Store the cucumbers away from avocados, bananas, tomatoes, or melons, as the cucumbers are more likely to yellow quickly due to the exposure of ethylene gas. Although not harmful, ethylene is a gas that is released from fruits and vegetables that causes produce to ripen more quickly. Produce experts recommend that produce like cucumbers should not be stored in plastic bags, like the kind you would pick up in the grocery store, as this will cause them to ripen more quickly. (Though if you’re trying to move an avocado along faster, or ripen bananas for a quick bread, then storing them at room temperature on the kitchen counter in a bag is perfect.)
Using Plastic Wrap
One trick for keeping cucumbers fresh is wrapping them in plastic wrap. Storing them this way will help to slow down their ripening. According to Cook’s Illustrated, wrapped cucumbers lasted longer than cucumbers stored loose or in a Ziploc bag: "The plastic wrap formed an airtight second skin, keeping moisture from leaving the fruit and nearly preventing moisture loss from occurring."
Once the cucumbers are tightly wrapped in plastic, store them in an airtight storage container in your refrigerator. Groundbreaking? No. But a surefire way to prevent mushy cukes? Yes.
How to Store Cut Cucumbers
If you’ve pre-cut or sliced cucumbers for snacking or a salad but have some left over, don’t just throw them out or put them in a plastic bag. The best way to store cut cucumbers is to wrap them in a damp paper towel and place them in an airtight storage container. The tight, locking seal on the cover of the container will help to keep them extra fresh. Place the container in your refrigerator or in the crisper drawer and use the cut cukes within five days.
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Written by: Kelly Vaughan
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32 Comments
They actually work.
Keep everything in them DRY however, a piece of paper towel helps.
the plastic bag it came in. The next paragraph says to wrap the cuke in PLASTIC
to store in the fridge. What is the difference? (Ecological issues aside.)
Several years ago our daughter gave me one of the BluApple kits for my refrigerator produce drawers. It contains two plastic containers that you change an inner packet every quarter. They help slow the ripening/ethylene gas issue. They make a _huge_ difference in slowing down food ripening/food waste. Each year my daughter sends me another set of refills (2 sets of 4). To replace the packets, you pry open the bluapple and swap out the packets. The old packets can be cut open and the innards used as plant food.
During the last year, they've added two other lines to their products: storage bags w/a liner and a foam sheet to place in the bottom of the produce drawer. On the bags w/liner, sometimes you wet it and wrap the new produce in the damp toweling; sometimes you wrap it in dry toweling. I wish they sold just the toweling as refills (they don't), but I ended up using some heavyweight bamboo toweling as a replacement and am using the same perferorated plastic bags 6 months later. The (plastic) foam sheets cut down on bruising of fruit like pears.
If you go to the BluApple site, you can scroll down and see how they recommend storing different fruits & veggies. https://thebluapple.com/pages/produce-storage-tips
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