Strange Cucumber varieties - Weird Fruit Explorer Ep. 228

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Music:
"019 Ffuge No Five" by Miranda taylor and Mike Hunchback
Severed Lips Recording

Used with permission of artist. Available on Free music archive under a creative commons attribution.

[WeirdExplorer]

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[mrcat]

i grew those achochas in the UK last year and they get MASSIVE i mean the plant will literally sprawl 20-30 feet and give you hundreds of fruits, quite an amazing plant....

[rino]

Russia is the exact place I'd expect stout brown cucumbers to come from.

[gunnarthegumbootguy]

cucumbers are so strange in the way they are mild but still the aroma sticks to everything if you work with them for a long time. when i worked at a school kitchen in sweden we made cucumber slice salad almost every day and i always smelled of cucumbers

[na]

Finally made it to the international grocer store in Columbus, OH. Didn't have time to stop last trip through town. I found rombutans and longans. There were persimmons (looked kinda abused) and several types of bananas (couldn't get near them due to all the kids.) I'm excited. I can't hardly wait till after we get back to the hotel tonight. Oh, and the small yellow/green mango. I got one of those too.

[theuglykwan]

I've actually grown them before in Scotland, they grew relatively well on vines so somewhere with better weather it would probably take over!

[abbygaby]

achojcha, my mom used to hollow it and fill it with a meat and veggies stirfry and then batter and deepfry the whole thing, achojchas rellenas! tasty stuff

[jerristone]

I’ve grown the brown Russians in Maine. I love them. I have had some that are not seedy and are so white and crunchy!

[dogvom]

This summer I had the best, sweetest melon I've ever eaten. The grocer had no idea what it was, so I looked it up from the label stuck on it and it was a TOAD-SKIN MELON from Spain. It looks weirdly dark and beautiful on the outside and in cross-section it looks for all the world like a great big cucumber, with crisp, white flesh. I understand it is also called the Santa Claus melon, for reasons that escape me. I get why it's called toad-skin ( _piel de sapo_ ), though.

It was so delicious that I couldn't stop eating this human-head-sized melon with a spoon until it was all gone — in one sitting — and the grocer hasn't had it in since then. Maybe next summer. You must try it!

Oh, if you're ever near the Canadian prairies, you should totally try Saskatoon berries. They look a lot like small blueberries, but they're not related. They're actually more closely related to apples and the bushes they grow on are tree-sized, sometimes reaching 10 metres in height. They're also delicious, like chewy blueberries with a hint of almond, and I ate a lot of them when I was a kid in Saskatchewan, where they grow wild. They're especially good in pies.

[kir]

You know that regular cucumbers we eat are not bioligically ripe, right? If you leave them on vine they all will eventually turn yellow and then brown.
This Brown Russian cuke is not known in Russia btw, and looks a lot like Indian Poona Kheera variety, might be related or the same variety obtained from different sources.

[joshuamidgette]

Look up Sikkim and Gagon cucumbers for some really interesting colored cucumbers.

[ellemiller]

Oh your lemon cucumber is way overripe :( you gotta get em while they’re just bigger than a golf ball, and barely yellow—if even that.

[spanishderp]

My mom used to grow lemon cucumbers, they’re her favorite kind.

[feralkevin]

The brown Russian and the the lemon cukes in the video were also more ripe than the green cucumber. The green one when eaten as ripe as the others would also have larger seeds and they get really nasty when maturing seeds. There is also another form of the alchocha which has little spiky looking things on the fruit, we call them hedgehog cucumbers.

[hernando-d]

The bolivian "Chocha" is also called "Caigüa", you can prepare "Stuffed Caigüa" with It, and the preparation is the same as the "Stuffed Bell Peppers", you can also prepare "Dulce de Caigüa": it's cooked Caigüa with honey. Amazing video!

[gregorypappas]

My favorite variety of cucumber is the Armenian cucumber, supposedly a cross of cucumber and honey dew...

[michigantropicalgardener]

The skin of the lemon cucumber is supposed to be better tasting than the standard variety cucumber. I usually grow the lemon cucumber in my garden. Last year they didn't do anything. It was a bad year in MI for a lot of fruit and vegetables. At my house we slice the cucumber and put it in a bowl of vinegar, water, diced onion and a pinch of salt.

[peachypeach]

In Chinese cooking we have what's called an "old cucumber" 老黄瓜. Because it's appearance is literally resembles a cucumber left on a vine for waaayyy too long. (I always thought that, as a kid growing up lol). Not sure if it's the exact same plant as the brown russian. The Chinese 'Old Cucumber', It's used in soups, where I think the more mature specimens are harvested. After boiling them they don't taste like much. You'd use a spoon to scoop out the guts and eat it like a really soft mush. Adds like a 'green' taste to traditional soups. Supposed to have a whole host a benefits etc. Sometimes the older ones have tough rind that's not very nice to eat.

[marialiyubman]

What do you call that cucumber that when it’s ripe you can gently touch it and it launches itself off the branch like a projectile?

[MeliponiculturaenCostaRica]

Lol, you found a Caiba, on another side of the country they call them Jaiba, you never eat it raw here, only cooked, chopped or filled with meat and covered in egg