How to Cut "Nice" Cucumber for Salads

This method for cucumber cutting can be used for both American style green salads as well as Mediterranean style chunky salads (the tomato, olive, cucumber and feta kind). Some folks will tell you that it's always best and "nice" to peel the cucumber. That's right and wrong. It's best to be able to see both green skin and white flesh on each piece of cucumber.

Like so:

Start with a piece of cucumber:

From there, using a knife slice off pieces of skin at places you call top, bottom, and sides, like this:

Now quarter the cucumber thus:

Next, tip each quarter on its side and slice out the seeds. Those are definitely not "nice":

Next, slice each quarter piece in half down the white section...

...and then dice into appropriate sizes. This yields uniformly sized pieces of cucumber with a bit of green and a bit of white on each piece, with nary a seed in sight (is the idea anyway):

The remaining seed centers are great to scarf down with a pinch of salt and pepper. Yummy and refreshing.