I love cucumbers! Of course I prefer them in pickle form if I have a choice, but in the summer heat, eating them plain and ice cold is definitely the way to go.

Until recently…

For some reason over the past year, it seems like every time I’ve bought cucumbers, part or all of every one had this god-awful bitter taste. It got to the point where even using them to juice was ruining the entire batch of green drink.

So I stopped buying them.

Well, the other day when I was skimming through one of my groups, someone mentioned that if you cut the end off a cucumber and then swirl it around ON the end, it would foam up and get rid of the bitter taste.

Since then, I’ve read thru several other sites to see why (or if) this really works.

There seems to be mixed reviews.

I find sites where people say they’ve been doing this since they were kids so they weren’t even aware that cucumbers COULD be bitter. They do agree, however, that the end you cut off is the end that was attached to the vine (which even the “science” says is where the bitter exists to begin with).

Other people state they put salt and/or vinegar on their cukes so they’d never notice anyway. I don’t know about the vinegar, but as a cucumber salter, I can verify that the salt alone does NOT override the evil bitterness!

Then you have what I consider the science expert type sites that ask logically how cucumber eaters think rubbing the cut end of a cucumber against the rest of the cucumber could POSSIBLY change the taste of the whole cucumber.

To those ones I say… the same way swishing coconut oil around in my mouth and pulling it between my teeth can pull toxins out of the rest of my body? DUH!!

Regardless of where you stand on this issue (if you have an opinion either way), I can tell you this. I’ve done this with the last 3 cucumbers I’ve bought and haven’t had a bitter one yet!!

And for me, a minute of “voodoo” is worth my time if it can change my entire experience of eating a cucumber, back to something that’s enjoyable.

So, I’ll keep rubbing my cucumber until I find one that’s bitter again (Hey, I’m always open to being proven wrong).

Until then, I’ve got a cucumber calling my name.

Debi aka @GenXBrat

p.s. Do you do this? Is it just something that’s been passed down thru your family? Have you ever had a bitter cucumber that you’ve done this to? Let me know in the comments below!!