Tasty Techniques: Watermelon

Watermelon are so delicious at this time of year, sweet and juicy, so I had to get one when we went to the store this week.

I used to buy my watermelon pre-sliced. To me, it wasn’t worth the effort to slice it up myself. It was a time-consuming headache that I gladly paid a premium price for someone else to take care of.

This went on until I went to a friend’s house, and her husband sliced up a whole watermelon into wedges without the rind in 10 minutes flat while I watched. I was mightily impressed and now use this technique to slice all my melon.



I find that you need a long, thin, flexible knife for this. I’m pretty sure that knife there is meant to be a filet knife, and it works perfectly. The first step is to cut the whole watermelon in half, long-ways if it is oblong instead of round, so you end up with an oval surface. If the watermelon does happen to be round, it doesn’t matter much which way you cut as you’ll wind up with circles either way.

And a note on cutting large watermelon: it really works best if you stick the blade almost completely into the melon at the top, hold the top of the melon with one hand, and pull the handle down toward you like a lever with the other hand. Once you pull the knife down as far as you can, use both hands to rotate the melon to put the knife handle back at the top so you can pull it down toward you again. It was impossible for me to take a picture of myself doing this, so hopefully you have a lively imagination.





Next, you want to cut the halves into wedges. I would recommend you work with the watermelon in batches, moving the pieces you’re not currently working with out of the way. Otherwise there will be no room and you’re likely to cut yourself. Listen to my words young Jedi, for I speak from experience.



Once you have your wedges, make slices into the flesh of the melon – just to the rind but not through.



Take your blade, starting at one side of the wedge, and run it all the way along the rind, just above the white part.

You can tell from this picture in places I left quite a bit of flesh above the rind. That’s okay! Just take the slices you made, move them out of the way, and re-cut. You’ll get little pieces, but little pieces of watermelon are perfect for little hands.



In about 10 minutes, you’ll have this. Perfecto!

In order to adapt this for other melons like cantaloupe or honeydew, you’ll want to scoop out the seeds just after cutting the melon in half, and then proceed as normal.