Watermelon Done Right: De-Seed Like a Pro

Step 15 For The Kids (And The Young At Heart)

Share with the children, or your friends (or hog it all for yourself!) the watermelon bowls you cut from the ends of the melon at the very beginning. The few seeds that you find and spit out just make the sweet, red flesh that much more tasty!

Comments

[chuckyd]

Why waste all that time and effort playing with the watermelon? Just split it open and eat, seeds and all!!

[MiltReynolds]

Good question. I've wondered about that very issue.

De-seeding a watermelon, no matter what method, is somewhat time-intensive and tedious. In many ways it seems needlessly complicating something that should be very easy, informal and low-tech.

It honestly does give me pleasure, however, to spend the time and thought required to carefully, effectively de-seed a watermelon. It pleases me to serve guests easy-to-eat, pre-chunked, de-seeded sweet watermelon.

So, I guess it comes down to simple preference and enjoyment. It pleases me to de-seed watermelon in this way, and part of the pleasure is the opportunity to share the method with others.

But any way you slice it, watermelon is fantastically delicious!

[edwoodard]

A question And a comment - if you do all this how do you spit seeds at your little brother? My Grandmother used to make pickled watermelon rinds. With the white part not the green. I don't remember any bitterness.

[MiltReynolds]

Great question! That's the beauty of my patented Super-Dooper Watermelon De-Seeding Method: after easily scraping all the seeds out and mashing the scraps through a screen, you've got a large handful of black, slippery watermelon seeds, ready for transfer to your Anatomical Diabolical Anti-Brother Watermelon Seed Demolition Device (your mouth). All the seeds you need, conveniently gathered into one bowl. Grab a seed and spit! If you gallantly volunteer to de-seed the family watermelon, YOU are the only one with seeds. He's defenseless! You rule!

[star folder]

When you have a watermelon with thick white part, separate it from the red and the green rind. Cut into strips. Put the watermelon rind strips into a jar of pickle juice that has been saved in the refrigerator for just this purpose. The jar has the pickle juice of at least two jars of pickles (that we liked). Leave the rind slices in the juice, stored in the fridge for at least two weeks before eating. This extra use of pickle juice also works with onions. Pickles or pickled food goes well with pork and almost anything else.

[MiltReynolds]

What an easy recipe! Thank you! I do have plans to try pickling some rind. It sounds delicious. Thanks for the comment!

[ifrogcrafts]

Thank you so much for sharing this. Will be sharing the link on Facebook. I'm adding a watermelon to my grocery list this week, just to try in. =) Thanks again!!! <><

[twighahn]

watermelon is fat burning food

[MiltReynolds]

Always on the lookout for good weight-loss tips. If you find a good link supporting watermelon burning fat, send it my way. Thanks for the comment!

[twighahn]

http://www.101fatburningfoods.com/watermelon.html

[MiltReynolds]

Most excellent! Good recipes. Many thanks!

[MiltReynolds]

I'm so glad you liked it! I just finished eating the last of the watermelon pictured in this instructable...time to get another melon!

[vader0ne]

That's what I usually do, cut the watermelon normally after cutting watermelon in half, and take my knife and cut the rine off the slice watermelon into cubes and place in an ice cream bucket and store it in the refrigerator. Thank you for the great indestructible.

[MiltReynolds]

You're welcome! Sounds like you've got a good method, too!

[y2clay14]

Wow excellent Instructable! I just tried this method and it worked GREAT! I also like your writing style.

[MiltReynolds]

All right! A real-live testimonial! Thanks for the feedback and encouragement!

[dineshonline]

Absolutely love your style of commentary, you should write a lot. And I'm off to buy a watermelon in London. Not as sweet as the ones you get stateside though. i wonder if you could post on youtube what a good and a bad watermelon sound like please.

[MiltReynolds]

Thank you so much for your kind words! I'll have to consider how best to do the sound bite...it sounds like it would entail me buying a bad one! Maybe I could just take the camera to the produce stand and have the farmer pick out a bad one and a good one...I'll think about it. Thanks for the suggestion!

[kdkedwards]

Good , sweet watermelon has sticky-sugary stuff on and near the stem end of the melon...its the sugar that comes out of the vine when it was picked.

[rfcroc]

A foolproof way to pick a decent melon: 1) heavier generally is better 2) pick up the melon and give it a gentle slap- if it makes a " think " or " thank " sound, it's not a good one -always listen for a defined " thunk " as you hit it.

[MiltReynolds]

Good suggestions! I have to confess that I am not real good at consistently picking good ones. Thankfully, we have an honest, friendly produce stand not too far from town. Usually we'll pick out a good prospect, take it to the counter, where the clerk will pick it up and immediately say, "Oh, no! Not this one! Mabel, go out and pick these folks a good one!" And Mabel will bring back a different one, slap it gently and say, "See? THAT'S how it should sound!" And she's been right every time!

[twighahn]

its suposed to sound just like whenu slap ur stomach. slap the melon and then ur stomach if they sound the same its a good one

[Shiftlock]

When I slap a watermelon, all I hear is a slapping sound. If the melon said "think," "thank," "thunk," or even "ouch," I'd probably drop it on the ground and run! :) Seriously though, I'm not clear on the difference between the sounds based on the way they're written. I would need an audible example to know the difference.

[WayneBuckhanan]

My wife had trouble with the noise trick too. She just learned, yesterday in fact, to check the bottom where the watermelon was lying on the ground. If it is still white it's not ripe, if it has gone yellow it's ripe. So there is a second method for ya!

[MiltReynolds]

Yes, that sounds like a good idea, too!

[JermsG]

I remember hearing about a story told by someone who worked in a produce market, where there was a blind guy who would often come in and choose his watermelons based on the sound they made when he knocked on them.
Turned out he was a piano tuner, and his idea of a perfect watermelon was B-flat.

I have no idea whether that's true, but it's a nice story.

Incidentally, those 'bowls' cut from the ends of the watermelon look like they would be perfect with a scoop of icecream on top.

It looks like the watermelons you get are more firm than the ones I'm used to; if I were to try to "break it along the seed-line" I'd just end up with handfuls of yummy yummy red mush.
And our white rinds are not very bitter, but still best avoided. Before you ask, I live in New Zealand.

Great instructable!

[MiltReynolds]

Great story! Yes, a scoop of ice-cream (vanilla, for me!) would be great with watermelon. By the way, here's a tip, no charge, just because I'm a great person: Buy some cheap vanilla ice-cream. Put three scoops in a bowl. Add chilled water, not too much...about the same amount you'd put in a bowl of cold cereal like corn flakes or cheerios. Mix the ice-cream and the water together with your spoon. You don't really want it to be the consistency of a milk shake...more like chunky ice-cream stew. Now, eat it. Tastes just about like freshly churned, homemade ice-cream (if you close your eyes and think "Summertime, And The Livin's Easy...")

[Shiftlock]

You eat your cereal with cold water in it? Huh, that's different. Doesn't it get soggy really fast? I've never heard of anyone putting anything but milk into cereal. I would think that cold milk would also be better mixed with ice cream, as opposed to cold water. :shrug: Come to think of it, when I was in college, I vaguely remember seeing someone who carried cereal in a plastic bag with powdered milk, then added cold water and ate it right out of the bag with a plastic spoon before class began. So I guess I have seen someone add water to cold cereal, in a way, but still it was still milk before it was consumed. Plus, college kids do some really weird things sometimes. :grin:

[MiltReynolds]

Oops! I'm not THAT far out! I put MILK in my cold cereal! However, as you pour the cold water into the bowl of ice-cream, imagine it to BE milk.

I've tried milk in ice-cream...doesn't work as well. Not sure why...I'm thinking the water has a lower freezing point? If the ice-cream is quite cold, fresh from the freezer, and the water is quite cold, fresh from the fridge, the water forms ice crystals as it mixes with the ice-cream...makes it more like homemade, at least to my mouth.

[Shiftlock]

Neat. I just added vanilla ice cream to today's shopping list to try this. Thanks!

[MiltReynolds]

You know what? I've never tried pouring chilled hard cider over ice-cream. Hmmm, I wonder...

[JermsG]

Would you all stop making me so very very hungry?!! lol I would also have vanilla icecream in my watermelon bowls; any other flavour would just distract from the taste of the watermelon. I also eat cereal with water, but only when I've completely run out of milk, and have no other option (apart from skipping breakfast, but that's just crazy talk!) Thanks for adding my latest three things to my do-try list: watermelon bowls, mock-homemade icecream, and cider icecream syrup! And then to try all three combined! Mmmmyum!

[cocorrata]

You should try watermelons from Torreon, Mexico. They are sooooo delicious.