We had a melon discussion yesterday. My MIL was over along with her youngest, visiting from Vermont.
I served watermelon for dessert. Earlier I’d purchased a seedless melon and cubed the entire melon, giving the rinds to our hens. The cubed melon went into various containers and was refrigerated.
My BIL was aghast. When he buys a melon he slices off a piece as needed, covering the now exposed melon with plastic wrap. He claims cubing the entirety forces you to consume it quickly before it goes bad, while his approach allows for relaxed enjoyment over a longer time.
The taking off slices period isn’t all the lengthy. I love cold watermelon in Summer. Since I live alone I don’t buy larger ones. And they are easier to refrigerate split down the middle.
We are anarchists. We buy the cubed watermelon in the plastic box at the grocery store.
Most of the time, it is very very good.
A whole melon, when sliced, will dessicate somewhat in the refrigerator. Plastic wrap or an elasticated bowl cover to preserve the freshness can drip. Aforesaid dessication of those drips leaves you with sticky goo on the shelf, and sometimes also right inside the door.
When you clean a refrigerator, have you ever encountered that unidentifiable “taffy” underneath the bottom crisper drawer? Dessicated watermelon drips can definitely contribute to this horror. (Sometimes this “taffy” nightmare contains lint and hair… )
“Peeling” an entire watermelon and cutting it into chunks to be stored in Tupperware leaves the kitchen looking like a battleground. Finding room in the overstuffed garbage can for the rind can be vexing.
A perfect solution is to buy a baby melon for two people. The half melon becomes a personal bowl and contains the mess.
Or, you can buy a massive Texas watermelon and insist that all watermelon activities stay outside. Hose off everyone before they are allowed back in the house.
For a group I’ll cut the melon in half and slice half of it up and see how it goes. It’s a pretty good method for many serve yourself dishes. Don’t wait for the last piece to go before restocking, people have some aversion to taking the last piece so you have add some more to find out if they’re still hungry.
I think cubing it is overall less messy and more storage friendly, even if it might hasten the souring of it faster. It just encourages me to eat more of it. Hydration, hydration. Tasty hydration at that.
I referred to cubed, but I cut mine into triangular wedges. I do this all within the confines of my sink. ( I buy those semi-elongated ones, bigger than the spherical “personal” ones, smaller than the big ones )
Slice melon in half lengthwise, then cut each half in half, lengthwise.
Take the knife and make 6 or 7 spanwise relief cuts perpendicular to the length of each quarter.
Take each quarter, while holding it over your container, and carefully “fillet” cut the juicy hunks in one continuous motion. These triangular hunks go in the big-ass container.
Get a large tablespoon and “scavenge” the remaining watermelon remaining in the rind within the radius within the rind quarters the knife couldn’t get into. The relief cuts make this easier, and all these smaller pieces go into a smaller container, as one or two bite pieces.
Have the trash can right beside you adjacent to the sink, put the rinds in there, take the bag out to the outside trash can, because few things reek worse than rotting watermelon rinds. I usually do all this the day before trash day.
We do this frequently with the generally-spherical seedless watermelons. They’re not exactly petite watermelons, but they’re a lot smaller that the honking back-of-the-pickup behemoths sold along roadsides.
To my experience, cubed watermelon can last very easily when refrigerated a week in well-sealed container. In truth, it’s even longer than a week – I’ve eaten refrigerated watermelon cubes that were surely nine or ten days old with no ill effects.
Slice as needed. And I buy the largest ones available.
The most recent one I had was a small basketball sized one, though. And for a long time I had been curious about the concept of pickled watermelon rind, so I looked up recipes. They involved more ingredients than I had on hand at the moment, so I just peeled, cubed and boiled the rind in water and sugar and a packet of fruit punch Kool-Aid, then chilled it in the freezer. It turned out well. Sweet, soft, similar to the flesh except with a light spicy aftertaste.
