Seedless Cucumbers: The Varieties To Look Out For

Cucumbers are wonderful eaten raw, tossed into salads and of course pickled and enjoyed as a snack, but sometimes those darn seeds are so annoying. They've even turned some of us away from cukes entirely. Do you find you seem to buy the ones with the biggest seeds and have to scrape them out with a spoon? Well, you may be buying the wrong varieties.

Not all cucumbers have those pesky hard seeds -- many are bred to have underdeveloped seeds that are hardly noticeable, much like seedless watermelons. These cucumbers need no seeding or even peeling because their skins are so tender. Some varieties, like the English cucumber, are also bred to be burpless (just in case you wanted to know).

The next time you take a trip to the farmer's market or supermarket, look for these varieties (in the slideshow below). You'll be doing yourself -- and others -- a favor. And if you need some recipe ideas, we've got 28 of them here.