Persian cucumbers! Where have you been my whole life?

Cafe Society
1

I started buying Persian cucumbers a few weeks ago, after having them in a salad in a restaurant. My God, what a difference they make! They’re so sweet, crisp and flavorful! What an amazing contrast to the normal bloated, watery, greasy-skinned things I’ve been buying for years. My daughter has commanded me to buy more and give them to her as a snack for school. Cucumbers! Requested as a snack! Astounding!

So … anyway … is anyone else in the middle of a brand-new love affair with the Persian cucumber?

(And not like THAT. They’re too under-endowed for those sorts of shenanigans anyway.)

2

Huh. Is that why the cucumbers in the salads at Mediterranean places tend to be that much more delicious than mine at home?

3

Are they in regular grocery stores in America?

4

LA Times food writer agrees with the OP:

Personally, I loves me some greasy-skinned (peeled) “coarse, watery commercial cucumbers” with slurpy seeds, especially when they get rather yellow-greenly overripe and develop a kind of sour tang: mmmmm. But these little “kiddie cukes” sound nice too, in their own way.

5

I agree. I don’t think I’ve ever had Persian cucumbers, but I love the standard watery variety, too. I treat it like the vegetable (culinarily) version of a watermelon.

6

They’re in MY regular grocery store, but then I live in a neighborhood in L.A. with a high Persian/foodie population. YMMV.

7

And then there are English cucumbers, which are similar to Persian cukes but a lot longer. I get those a lot, but I need to try the Persian ones. I love having the nice tasty skin you can eat. I haven’t eaten the typical American variety in years.

8

I live in central Illinois and my grocery store carries “salad cucumbers” that look exactly like the pictures of Persian cucumbers I find on Google. They tend to have a tough-ish skin though, so I wonder if they really are the same. Anyhow, they’re the same dimensions and taste much better than the huge clunkers. I have some in my fridge right now!

9

I’ve been finding them in Whole Foods and Wegmans.
They are great in salads and jut cut in half lengthwise for snacking.

10

Wait, you can’t eat the skin on regular cucumbers? Not supposed to? I’ve never peeled a cucumber in my life. I’ve been doing it wrong the whole time?

11

Trader Joe’s has them. I don’t remember whether they label them as Persian, but that’s what they are.

12

Nah, I eat the skin on the regular ones too.

13

You can eat the skin. I don’t eat the skin on cukes that have been waxed, because I find it tough and unpleasant, but I always leave the skin on unwaxed cukes.

14

Those long, shrink wrapped cukes labeled as English here in California are labeled as Lebanese in Australia. None are called Persian.

15

In my local grocery stores (in Canberra, Australia), the long, shrink-wrapped cucumbers are called Continental cucumbers, and there is a variety called Lebanese cucumbers that is, I think, the same or similar to the Persian cucumber described in the OP. The thick- and waxy-skinned cucumber is called a green cucumber.

Lebanese cucumbers are, indeed, awesome.

16

I think those are the ones I was used to in Spain; they’re shorter than the ones I saw in the UK and a lot smaller than American ones.

Bigger isn’t always better.

17

I’ve been getting these recently, Costco sells them as Mini Cucumbers. Lovely little guys, and when making a salad, you never have leftover cucumber in the fridge, so they last a long time.

18

Same here.

(And if you cut from the nipple end instead of the round one, they keep fairly well in the fridge. Longer than they last, anyway.)

19

I believe their store brand is called “Ayatollah Yūsuf’s.”

20

We buy similar-looking cucumbers in Toronto, but they’re labeled as Japanese cucumbers.

My wife loves them.