Yes, You Can Freeze Your Excess Cucumbers!

Looking to preserve your extra cucumbers besides making pickles? Yes, you can freeze your extra cucumbers! I prefer the simplicity of freezing vegetables to canning if I can get away with it. I have done this for years, and in this post I will show you how to freeze your own cucumbers. This post yields both iced cucumber juice cubes and the frozen cucumber flesh. 

1. First peel the cucumbers and remove the seeds. You can leave some of the peel on, depending on if you want the extra color. However, the peels can impart bitterness to cucumbers. Removing both the seeds and peels gives a consistent texture to the final product. I use a grapefruit spoon to easily remove seeds from my cucumbers.

2. Roughly cut the cucumbers into 1 inch cubes, and add 1-2 cups of cubed cukes to the food processor. Pulse until uniformly chopped. Don't add too many cucumbers to the food processor at once, or the cucumbers sizes will be irregular.

3. Drain cucumbers with a fine sieve or cheese cloth, reserving juice.  Press the cucumber flesh with with a spoon to squeeze out most of the juice. The cheese cloth will remove tiny flakes, but a sieve works fine for less picky folks. 

4. Place the juice in ice cube trays. Cover with freezer paper, place in the freezer on a flat surface to freeze over night.

5. Place cucumber flesh in molds to freeze over night.

Use portioned molds to freeze perfect 1 cup portions overnight.  I love these molds because I can re-use them over and over. This week, I froze cucumbers, salsa, and bone broth using the same containers! It saves so much time and money for me.

6. The next day, remove frozen juice cubes and frozen cucumbers from molds and place these in separate freezer bags. 

Notes:

Some of the texture is lost after freezing cucumbers, but the flavor remains. Cucumbers can be defrosted in the microwave. One cup of frozen cucumbers can be defrosted at 1 pound. Any remaining frozen pieces can be mashed.

Defrosted cucumber cube.

Some great recipes to use frozen cucumbers are for dips such as Tzatziki or a cold soup, such as Russian Okrashka. 

Frozen cucumber juice can be added to water for a refreshing drink. I also like to add lime or coconut juice to my cucumber ice cubes for fun added flavor.

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