("Dio ѐ Zingaro" by La Municipale Balcanica)
- Hi, I'm Jerry James Stone and in today's video
we're gonna talk about English cucumbers.
Just so you know the difference,
this is the English variety.
Here in America, it's typically wrapped in plastic,
but it's a longer, skinnier cucumber.
In comparison this is the standard kinda slicing cucumber,
which is girthier, shorter, and waxier.
So when you're at the grocery store,
these can be a little tricky
because they're wrapped in plastic,
so you can't necessarily tell as easily
how fresh it is, maybe compared to other produce
which is not wrapped in plastic.
So it bothers me that they're wrapped in plastic.
I have a lot of issues with excess waste,
but with English cucumbers I think one of the reasons is
is that they have a extremely thin skin,
kinda like our current president,
compared to a regular cucumber.
So, sorry. (chuckles)
So English cucumbers, how do you buy them?
Well the thing to look for
is because they're wrapped in plastic,
you want to make sure that there's no tears in the plastic.
You don't have to get a magnifying glass out,
but you just want to look for visible tears,
because what happens is if the plastic is torn somewhere
there's gonna get humidity
trapped between the cucumber and the actual plastic,
and that's one of the first things
that's gonna cause it to spoil.
So kind of just give it a visual inspection,
make sure that there's no tears throughout the plastic,
and like I said,
you don't have to be anal retentive about it,
but just give it a look.
This'll be really important
for when you bring this cucumber home.
So the next thing that I look for,
because of how English cucumbers,
just because of their biology
and the way that they're packaged,
at least here in America,
if they are spoiling, if they're starting to go,
they typically tend to spoil at the tips first.
So I just kind of give it a little bit of a press
with my thumb, around the perimeter of the tip.
Everything about this just feels really dirty, (laughs)
pressing my thumb around the perimeter there,
and just do that on both sides.
And if it starts to kinda give, if it feels like it's soft,
just a little bit softer than it should be,
you probably don't want that one.
The main reason to look for that
when you're buying an English cucumber
is because they're expensive
in comparison to standard slicing cucumbers.
Those cucumbers are a lot cheaper.
They're also a lot more bitter.
A lot of times the English cucumber
is kind of sold as a seedless one,
and well that's just marketing.
I mean they're not really seedless, they're just by nature
have really, really tiny seeds in them.
And so they say that they're seedless,
and you can eat them and they don't add a bitterness to it,
but honestly it's like saying, hey bananas come with peels!
Whatever, that's just how they are.
So anyway, that's an English cucumber.
Like I said, look at the plastic,
make sure that there's no humidity trapped inside,
no visible tears, and then just check the ends
and make sure that they're not soft.
And that's how you buy an English cucumber.
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and I'll see you guys next time.