Ripen Up! How to Pick Watermelon

hi I'm produce man James and today I'm going to demonstrate how to pick a watermelon when you want to get a ripe watermelon there's a couple things that you're going to want to look for one of the first things that I check is I look at the bottom of the melon and I look for a nice yellow patch this is where the watermelon sat on the ground the longer it sat on the ground the yellow where this is going to be and the riper the melon is going to be if it's white that means they took it off the vine early and it's not going to be the best sweetness possible when you remove it from the vine it doesn't ripen anymore so that's as ripe as it's going to be another indicator that I look for is a nice dark green rind the darker the color the sweeter the melon one more indicator that I use is I'll pick up the melon and I'll slap the side of it you want a nice high-pitched sound that shows that your watermelon is nice and firm so what I do is I pick up the watermelon I put it close to my ear and I tap it with an open hand gently hear that that's what you want to that's what you want to look for before you cut your watermelon I would recommend washing it I mean it did come from the field there might be some dirt particles left on the rind and when you cut into it you don't want your knife to drive that into the melon you want to be able to taste the melon you don't want to taste dirt so what I will do is I'll take a vegetable brush you can find these in your produce department or in the kitchen utensil Department of any grocery store there's about three four bucks and then you're going to put a lot of in the rinse your melon with a lot of water and use a very small amount of a mild soap let you can even use dawn because your because you're just going to rinse it off anyway turn on your water get your melon nice and wet it's okay you can take it then you take your vegetable brush with a little tiny bit of soap on it and you scrub your melon really good you want to make sure you all around it particularly on the end where they took the stem off which would be this end right here you're going to want to scrub that riddim you get so you just scrub your melon and then you rinse it off and dry it off with the towel very simple not very time-consuming and you get yourself a nice clean water melon with no aftertaste so place it on your towel dry it off ain't that a beauty I'm now going to cut the watermelon and a half and demonstrate two different methods to prepare it you can choose whichever ones easier for you or whichever one you decide first you're going to put the melon on your cutting board or your cutting surface however you want to do it make sure you get the flattest side possible and want to make sure you have a very sharp knife because you don't want it to slip and hurt yourself so you'll pick roughly you know the center of the melon that's if you're cutting it now just cut straight down this over here and now you have a wonderfully delicious water mouth first method I'm going to demonstrate is cutting it into wedges this is the most traditional way to prepare the watermelon it's very simple it's easy for kids you know they can pick it up it's handheld it's compact and you can get it done in no time so what I like to do just to get myself a nice flat surface I'm going to turn it around I'm going to cut a very tiny piece off right here so that way when I'm cutting wedges it's a little bit more stable then turn it on its side you're going to take your knife and then cut it however thick you want me I love watermelon so my wedge is gonna be a little bit thicker than yours but you know it's variable you can do big you can do small whatever you want to do then all you do cut it like a pizza you can make as many or as few wedges as you want just depends on how many people you're serving and how much watermelon that you need and there you go got yourself a watermelon pizza mmm very very sweet now the second way to prepare your watermelon is to shave the rind off you want to do this if you're going to create a party tray or you want bite-size pieces it's a little bit more manageable to do it this way takes a little bit more time but I like the results so as you're gonna do is you're going to cut your melon and a half I do this because half of a melon is a lot easier to work with and a whole melon if you're going to do a whole melon just cut and cut one of the ends off so that way you have a nice flat surface to work with but if you cut it in half all you got to do flip it over then you take your knife and you get of your watermelon to shave you're just going to go around and shave the rind off it's going to take pieces off little by little getting rid of the rind and getting down to brass tacks getting right down to that juicy watermelon for the top part I just take one of the flat sides and then I'll just continue shaving it at an angle until we get all that rind off and I'm left with nothing but sweet delicious watermelon so you want to shave all this rind off and just a fun little nutrition fact watermelons have a nice source or a nice source of lycopene you might have heard this in reference to tomatoes and other you know red fruits and vegetables what lycopene does is it's a compound that's called an antioxidant what antioxidants do is they help prevent what's known as oxygen or oxygen type substances that attack your cells antioxidants prevent them from damaging your cells so lycopene is something that you're definitely going to want your diet and as I said watermelons are good source of it tomatoes are a good source of it so as you can see there's lots of health benefits the eating of watermelon I'm channeling my inner Pablo Picasso I am an artiste of fruit okay now that you've got your watermelon shaved you can prepare it any way you want I like to cut it into slices again but now I can create little cubes for you some party trays you can make fruit kabobs and do whatever you want with it you can cut it into any size you want as you can see it's a lot easier it's a lot easier work with your pieces are more manageable there's less waste but the fact remains you're left with delicious watermelon now when it comes to storing your cut watermelon you're going to want to do one of two things for like the pieces you're going to want to put them in Tupperware and those are lashing the refrigerator about a week I have some leftover in my refrigerator right now from a barbecue last week and they're still good but anything longer than a week it's going to start to dry out you're going to notice liquid at the bottom of your Tupperware if you see a lot of liquid it's no good anymore sorry but if you have cut pieces such as this what I like to do is I'll buy some saran wrap and then I'll wrap them and a little quick tip is I'll trim the corners like so so that way there aren't any sharp edges and the saran wrap won't puncture but just wrap it really tight with some saran wrap and again you can store in your fridge for about a week an uncut melon will last you about 7 to 10 days just keep an eye on it and keep it at room temperature you can refrigerate it if you want but I wouldn't recommend refrigeration for more than two days and any longer than that and it's going to start to become mushy so it's best to leave it at room temperature well this protis mount-james i like to thank you for watching if you like the video give me a like be sure to subscribe to my channel more videos coming out soon if there's something that you would like me to demonstrate feel free to leave it in the comments I'll be looking at them and I will be replying so until next time this is produce man James saying stay fresh

Channel: James Ybarra

Views: 577,577

Rating: 4.7203751 out of 5

Keywords: howto, watermelon, ripe, store, produce, producemanjames, james, ripen up, prepare, Help, tutorial, stay fresh, tips, lycopene, USDA

Id: NB_URszSN6w

Length: 9min 42sec (582 seconds)

Published: Fri May 23 2014