How to peel cucumber quickly and easily

I am working on a recipe for avocado soup. This recipe calls for peeled cucumbers, and honestly, that’s not something that I do very often. I am a cucumber fanatic, and I eat them just about every single day. So in this article, I’m going to show you quickly how to peel a cucumber.

Right before writing this article, I was on a call with my mom. I told her that I was writing about peeling cucumbers. She reminded me about how she tried so hard to teach me to cook as a kid but in her words “You were stubborn.” So now, everything that I learn about cooking is in process learning. This makes writing about cooking quite fun for me. So let’s do this together.

Table of Contents

Step 1 Wash your cucumber

You must wash your cucumbers. It is tempting not to wash vegetables when they come home, but it is vital to remember that they are dirty. If you bought them at the grocery store, you have no idea how many people had handled them before you got them home. So always practice good vegetable hygiene.

Step 2 Dry your cucumbers

You want to dry them because when you start peeling them, you don’t want them to slip out of your hands.

Step 3 Cut the tips of the cucumber off.

The reason that you want to cut the tips off before you peel it is it just makes it a little bit more stable when you’re handling the cucumber during the peeling process. This step is entirely optional, and you can cut the ends off after you have peeled it, but I recommend trying this first.

Step 4 Peel the cucumber

If you are right-handed pick up the cucumber with your left hand. (Reverse this process if you’re left-handed) Using a vegetable peeler run the peeler along the edge of the cucumber lengthwise. Be careful not to dig too deep with a vegetable peeler you’re just trying to take the skin off. Just Glide the peeler down the length of the cucumber slowly removing the skin. Rotate the cucumber and repeat this process until the cucumber is fully peeled.

This is the vegetable peeler that we love

FAQ about Cucumbers

Are you supposed to peel a cucumber?

No, you do not have to peel a cucumber to eat it. However, before you eat a cucumber whole, make sure to wash it. Generally speaking, I eat the entire cucumber without peeling it. However, sometimes a recipe does call for the cucumber to be peeled. Also, some people think that the Cucumber skin adds a bitter taste to the cucumber. Whether to peel a cucumber or not peel a cucumber is purely based upon your taste.

How do you wash a cucumber?

The easiest way to wash a cucumber is to run it over cold water and gently scrub the skin with your fingers. If you feel like your cucumber has a bitter taste, you can rinse it with vinegar. However, after you’ve cleaned it with the vinegar, make sure you rinse the vinegar off with cold water.

Is the wax on cucumbers safe to eat?

Yes, the wax on cucumber is safe to eat. It may not come off when washing it with water alone, but that is okay. If you want to remove the wax from the cucumber, you can rinse the cucumber with vinegar and scrub it gently with your fingers. I do recommend a second rinsing with just cold water after this process.

Peeling a cucumber can be a great trick to get children to eat cucumbers when they’re weirded out by the skin. Peeling cucumbers is something super simple to do, and you can do it with a knife, but using a vegetable peeler is so much easier. If you peel the cucumber with a knife be super careful not to slip and cut yourself and the next time you’re out and about grab yourself one of those vegetable peelers or order one online like I recently did.