Cucumber sparkling water, three ways
The unsweetened infusion, the syrup, and the ratio that makes the finished drink.
In season: Field cucumbers June to September. Greenhouse English cucumbers year round, and for this they are the better buy because there is less seed and less bitterness.
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Infused, unsweetened
Use
Half an English cucumber per 1 litre, sliced into coins about 3mm thick, skin on
Method
Slice, drop into cold still water, refrigerate. No muddling. Crushed cucumber goes green and vegetal within the hour.
Time
1 hour for a clean cucumber note, 2 hours at the outside. Pull the slices at 2 hours whatever else is happening.
Sparkling
This is the one flavour in the batch that is fine going straight into sparkling water. Cucumber has almost no sugar and no pulp, so it does not knock the bubbles out. Slices into a bottle of soda water, cap on, back in the fridge for an hour.
Keeps
24 hours refrigerated with the cucumber pulled. Leave the slices in overnight and by morning it smells like the bottom of a salad drawer.
The syrup
Ratio
1 cup cucumber juice : 1 cup sugar, no added water
Method
Blend one peeled cucumber, strain through a sieve for the juice, then stir the sugar in cold until it dissolves. About ten minutes of stirring. The pan stays in the cupboard.
Keeps
1 week refrigerated and it starts dulling by day 4. Freeze in an ice tray for anything longer.
Note
Peel it for the syrup even though you leave the skin on for the infusion. The bitterness sits in the skin and blending drives it right through the batch.
The finished soda
1 part syrup to 5 parts sparkling water, over ice, pinch of salt
The pinch of salt is doing real work. Cucumber soda without it reads as sweet water.
The shrub version
1 cup cucumber juice, 1/2 cup rice vinegar, 3/4 cup sugar, all stirred cold until dissolved. Keeps 2 weeks refrigerated. Good with an aggressive amount of black pepper.
What doesn't work: Cooking it. Heat turns cucumber into cooked zucchini in about four minutes and the fresh green thing you wanted is gone permanently. Cucumber syrup is a cold-stir syrup and there is no version that involves a saucepan.
Goes with: MintLimeElderflower