Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 281 kcal | 80 kcal |
| Protein | 13.1 g | 3.7 g |
| Fat | 1.9 g | 0.5 g |
| saturated | 0.8 g | 0.2 g |
| Carbohydrate | 58.1 g | 16.5 g |
| sugars | 31.9 g | 9 g |
| Fibre | 9.4 g | 2.7 g |
| Sodium | 38 mg | 11 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
Ingredients
- 1.2 kg cucumbers
Instructions
- Choose a firm cucumber with small seeds — a Lebanese or a telegraph rather than a big field one. A cucumber is mostly water, and a seedy one is mostly the wrong kind of water.
- Leave the skin on unless it has been waxed. The skin holds a slice together as the flesh shrinks and it is what stops a chip curling up into a tube.
- Halve it lengthways and scrape the seed core out with a teaspoon if the seeds are large. That core is the wettest part of the vegetable and contributes almost nothing to the taste.
- Cut to 3 mm on a mandolin if you own one. By hand the slices vary, and at this thinness that variation is the difference between a crisp and a rubber disc.
- Salt the slices lightly, leave them on a towel for twenty minutes, then blot them. What comes out onto the towel in that time is remarkable, and every drop of it is time saved in the machine.
- Lay the slices flat without overlap. They shrink to about a third of their size, so a tray that looks half empty now will not be by the end.
- Dehydrate at 57 °C for 7 hours. Start checking early, because the narrow slices from the ends of the cucumber finish well ahead of the wide ones from the middle.
- A finished slice is rigid and translucent and snaps rather than bends. Take one off and let it cool first — cucumber comes off the tray flexible and stiffens within a minute or two.
- Store them airtight for six months with a desiccant sachet in the jar. If they go floppy on a humid day, a short spell back in the machine restores the snap.
