Not surprisingly, my daughter's favorite snack and summer food item is watermelon....which is great from a health point of view. But from a shopping and kitchen point of view...ugh!
My mother taught me how to pick a ripe watermelon a long time ago. And 90% of the time - it works beautifully. To hedge my success rate up even higher - I try and buy my watermelons at a farm stand or at a store that consistently has great produce. I will pay a little more because once I've lugged them home and cut them up - I want them to be FABULOUS! Watermelon is seasonal - I have to make the most of the few months we have together!
Mom always said - "to get the best watermelon money can buy" you have to look for a watermelon with a large, flat yellow spot. The place where the watermelon rests on the ground. If it's large and flat - that means the watermelon is heavy and has had time to ripen on the vine. The rest of the rind needs to be green and without blemishes or dents. That speaks to the care that was taken in harvesting and transporting the watermelon. I know you are supposed to knock on the watermelon with your fist and it's supposed to sound hollow...but I've never mastered that. I still do it - I keep thinking if I do it long enough, I will figure it out...but they all sound the same to me!!!
As far as the kitchen stress...it was always the huge, juicy mess of cutting a watermelon that I dreaded. Not enough to keep me from buying watermelons - but I dreaded it just the same!
I have great knives. I have a kitchen island. I am pretty solid in the kitchen. But man, oh man - I couldn't control the mess every time I cut up a watermelon! I mean, juice running down the side of everything, splatting all over the place from the slicing and dicing and chunking. And I didn't really have a system for cutting. I just dug in and kept going until I had all the goodness in chunks and in a container in my fridge!
That all changed last year when I watched a video on cutting a watermelon. It looked a little too good to be true, but as chance would have it - I had a watermelon on the counter, so I tried it. And it worked! I have since made one small adjustment to help make clean up easier, but it's the easiest, tidiest way I have found.
I hope you'll give it a try next time you find yourself with a beautiful, nutrient-soaked watermelon (think antioxidants, lycopene, vitamins A, B6, C....check this site out for more watermelon nutritional fun facts)
Here you go...(this is where I apologize for the poor quality of these photos...I am home alone, it's a cloudy day and I used my phone...I figure it's okay, because this is all about a time-saving, mess-easing technique...not making art or something for a fancy party...so I hope you won't be offended by my amateur pics!)
First, place your cutting board on a rimmed baking sheet (my little tweak to make clean up easier) and cut the watermelon in half
Then, cut the watermelon into quarters
Then, you will slice through the watermelon flesh on the diagonal all the way across the top
Then slice diagonally the other way, making sure you are slicing all the way down to the rind, but not through the white part
Next, run your knife along the curve of the rind (if you watermelon is not as ripe as you'd like - cut about an inch up...the center is always the sweetest)
The watermelon is now cut into chunks with very little mess or difficult knife cuts through the hard outer rind
Then you just dump the chunks into a container (if this is your first time doing this, feel free to squeal with delight or call someone over to see 'how cool this is!'...that's what I did!)
You end up with 4 sections of rind, easy to toss into a trash bag
And look at how little mess/juice you have to clean up. Even if you end up with an especially juicy watermelon - using the sheet pan will keep it from running all over your counters!
All there is left to do is head outside, put your feet up and enjoy a big bowl!
Happy Summer!
This is how I cut my watermelons! I fold an old bath towel in half to lay on the counter and catch all the juices! Happy Eating!!
ReplyDeleteMy mom used to use an old towel on her counters! All my old towels have somehow traveled to high school football locker rooms never to return!
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