Amazing Watermelon Facts

[Liz Johnson]

Make a delicious watermelon frozen margarita (or any other blended drink) by cutting watermelon into chunks and freezing them, then use that instead of ice in the blender. If you keep the black seeds in, they'll make the drink a deep red. (Of course, you'll have a few chopped-up seeds to contend with, but after one or two cocktials, you won't care a bit.)

[Toliver]

If you keep the black seeds in, they'll make the drink a deep red. (Of course, you'll have a few chopped-up seeds to contend with, but after one or two cocktials, you won't care a bit.)

A little fiber with my alcohol...do I sense a new hit product for the Baby Boomers?

And a watermelon quote I stumbled across:

"Watermelon - it's a good fruit. You eat, you drink, you wash your face."

--Enrico Caruso

[torakris]

Kristin--seriously, 83$ an "average" price for a Japanese watermelon?    i suppose there's reasons, but at that price, i wouldn't eat watermelon either.

Ok that is a little more then average but not too far off.

Because watermelons are so expensive (and refrigerators are so small) they are mostly sold already cut.

Large watermelons are a little smaller then a basketball (except for the square ones Japanese melons are round, pefectly round) and are cut usually into 1/6 or 1/8 pieces. I bought a 1/8 piece yesterday for $6.

Right now they have a lot of these softball sized ones going for $10 a piece.

[Rachel Perlow]

Rachel--thanks for the watermelon primer--useful, informative!

You're welcome. I'm planning on taking step-by-step photos the next time I deal with a watermelon.

OK, so it's a year later. But to be fair, all the watermelons I've seen or bought at supermarkets (and even farmers markets!!!) have been seedless varieties.

Choosing: If you are buying a whole watermelon, get the kind with seeds, they taste better. Larger with a paler side on the bottom, not green all the way around. When tapped it should sound kind of hollow. No bruises or cracks please.

As I discussed above, not only do seedless varieties tend to have less flavor, there's no point in discussing watermelon surgery when you aren't worried about the seeds. Thankfully, this past weekend we spied a watermelon guy along the side of a road, and he had long big honking seeded watermelons. We bought one for $8. I didn't weigh it but it's way bigger than last year's Thanksgiving turkey, so I'm thinking it's at least 30 lbs. Therefore the price was ~25 cents a pound. Not bad. Not a huge bargain, but then I can't seem to get seeded watermelons anywhere else these days.

Wash it!!!! I got so sick last year very soon (and for about 48 hours) after starting a watermelon. Now I always wash the rind with soap and hot water, like it's a dirty pot, before allowing a knife to pass through the rind into the flesh.

So last night, Jason's like, "we gotta eat that huge watermelon before it goes bad." I manage to get it into the sink and give it a good scrub with soap and hot water.

Storage: If you are only using a little watermelon at a time, don't hack the whole thing up. Start at one end. Immediately place the rest of the watermelon cut side up in a large bowl and wrap it with several pieces of plastic wrap. The wrap sticks to the bowl better than the fruit's rind, and the juice won't leak out and make a mess of your refrigerator.

Jason had to lug it out of the sink and into the bowl. I sliced off one end to eat that night.

Surgery: This is assuming you aren't serving the whole thing at a party, but enjoying it with just your family. Using a long thin-bladed knife (like a carving knife, not a chefs knife) You start at one end, cut about 8 inches off.

Cut a slice off the end about an inch thick.

Place thicker cut side down and peel like you would any large fruit or vegetable.

Get off all the white rind. Pickle or just throw out the rind.

The completely peeled watermelon, trimmed of all the white pith.

The seeds don't start until an inch or so into the flesh. So, start by cutting nice thick slices from the perimeter of the peeled watermelon.

See how nice and seed free that perimeter flesh is? Cut this up into cubes and place in another bowl.

Now for the seeds. They appear mostly in rows with gaps in between, so you can cut out additional seed-free sections of this area as well.

The center of this area is what I call "the heart" of the watermelon. Cut away the seeded area in slabs and you are left with the heart.

Cube this up and add to your bowl (sneak a piece, this is the very best seed-free part of the watermelon!).

Cut the seeded slabs into seeded and unseeded sections:

For the really seedy part you have a decision to make. If you are going to be very picky and get every seed out (I rarely have more than a seed or two in my finished product - 90% seed free? that's for amateurs!), you will end up with some very small pieces of watermelon from this section.

I find it easiest to just discard or make a granita (after blending and straining the flesh) from the very seeded sections. As you can see from this image, there isn't much waste if you just toss it:

Storage (con't):After the first cut (with the round end), cut slices several inches thick at a time, then re-wrap. By the time you get to the level of the top of the bowl, you should have a piece about the same size as the first piece you cut off the monster - so cut it all up. Store cut cubed watermelon in airtight containers.

Next time, just cut a couple inch thick slice from the cut end. I should be able to do that two or three times before reaching the level of the top of the bowl.

Mmm. Watermelon.

[fifi]

Uhhhh... this seems a little complicated.

Here in Texas (Hempstead being one of the "Watermelon Capital of The World" declarations), all we do is whack it up into sections, rind and all, then attack it with knife and fork. Salt is a personal preference. Oh... We also include seed spitting contests.

And the only bath that they get is in a big wash tub with ice if it is too big for the fridge.

[Fat Guy]

What an amazing tutorial. I'm going to buy a watermelon this weekend and practice.

[Rachel Perlow]

It is complicated, but it's for when you don't want to have seeds in your watermelon, like when doing a fancy fruit salad, or if you just don't like to bother with seeds. If you're having a big casual bbq in the back yard, then cutting in large slices is the most fun way to go.

However, I really highly recommend the scrubbing for all melons. The stores don't wash them, you don't know who's been handling them, either in the store or before it got there. When you cut through the rind into the flesh, anything untoward ends up in your fruit salad. When I said how sick I got last year, I meant it. Very very unpleasant, 'nuff said. (And no, I haven't gotten sick in the same way since I started scrubbing the melons like they were a gunky pot.)

[Al_Dente]

I know I've brought this up before, but, if you have a pool, you must do this.

1. Throw a pool party.

2. During party line up 8 or 10 folks into two teams at the edge at each end of the pool.

3. Apply a generous coating of vaseline to a whole watermelon.

4. Toss watermelon into middle of pool.

5. Command the two teams to dive in and commence playing underwater watermelon rugby.

6. Hilarity ensues.

[Rachel Perlow]

Choosing: If you are buying a whole watermelon, get the kind with seeds, they taste better. Larger, with a paler side on the bottom, not green all the way around. When tapped it should sound kind of hollow. No bruises or cracks please.

I realized after the fact that I didn't follow my own advice here. This watermelon doesn't have the pale side that comes from a fully grown watermelon sitting on the ground for a few days, ripening, before being cut from the vine. It is a good watermelon, but isn't great. You can see that the flesh isn't as red as it could be and it isn't as flavorful as it could be either.

[tanabutler]

Now would be a good time to share the recipe I acquired at Readerville.com for watermelon.

1 large watermelon (obviously, cubed)

Juice of 5 limes

1/2 cup chopped mint

Marinate overnight. It's "the most refreshing thing I've ever put into my mouth," according to one of the people who tried it via Readerville.

When the watermelon's all gone, add rum to the leftover juice and pour it over ice. Poof! Watermelon mojitos.

You. Will. Thank. Me.

[Andrew Fenton]

1 large watermelon (obviously, cubed)

Juice of 5 limes

1/2 cup chopped mint

This is the same flavor combination that goes into the watermelon margaritas that have been my go-to girly drink all this summer. Good, good stuff.

On choosing watermelons: I know that seeded watermelons taste better than the unseeded. But you know, I eat a lot of watermelon in the summer, and I'm basically lazy, and so unless I'm making something that needs a super-intense melon flavor (like sorbet), I go for the unseeded.

[jschyun]

What's strange is that I read somewhere that the space where the seed is supposed to be, is filled with sugary liquid. So a seedless watermelons should be sweeter.

Here in Southern California, getting good watermelons is easy. But for excellent melons, you need to choose wisely. One time I got one that was so perfectly ripe, it lives on in my pantheon of best produce of all time. When I chose it (yellow bottom, good heft), it was practically calling to me. I remember cutting it and it practically split itself in two. Every inch of that watermelon was dark red and sweet with great watermelon flavor. I think it cost me 9 cents a pound at Albertsons. It was about 10-15 pounds I think. It was seeded.

[Susan in FL]

I'm loving all these watermelon facts, as well as all the magazines and newspaper food sections that are covering the topic these days.

A really wierd fact I read about in one of our local newspaper's food columns is that we here in Florida are nearing the end of watermelon season because the heat is so bad, sometimes in the fields if not picked already, they explode!! Actually, from a distance that is, I would like to see an exploding watermelon.

We've had some very sweet seedless ones recently, although they weren't truly seedless; they had those teeny tiny tender light-colored seeds.

[Kent Wang]

I'm not surprised watermelon is so popular in China. When I was growing up, our family of three (I was only five-six years old) ate one watermelon every five days or so. That seemed pretty normal for all the other families we knew.

Nowadays, I eat one at the same rate -- all by myself.

Here's a funny conversation I had with ulterior epicure on Flickr:

Kent Wang:

My favorite fruit.

ulterior epicure:

mine too! i eat half a whole large (i mean LARGE) watermelon each day!!

Kent Wang:

Whoa, that's intense. I eat half that much and thought that I was hot shit.

Do you keep them in the refrigerator? If so, then you must know what it's like to be shivering cold after eating a quarter or so.

ulterior epicure:

1. Yes, I have a whole extra fridge in the garage just for watermelons - I go through them so quickly that I always have to have two or three on hand. Not kidding.

2. If you're cold after a quarter, imagine what it's like eating half!!

[chappie]

My stepfather used to talk about a friend going on an all-watermelon diet for two weeks and losing a ton of weight. I always wanted to try it, but never could muster up the will.