In honor of summertime BBQs, I created a video showing you the way I prep a watermelon. This is one method for “peeling” things: Lop the tops, and trim off the sides. This approach trims the rind most effectively, leaving you with nothing but the good stuff! The trimmings from this melon were about half the size of a basketball. When your fridge is at max capacity for a summer BBQ, saving space is important.
Here are the steps:
1. Secure your cutting board. I use the squishy style shelving liner, but you can use a wet washcloth or wet paper towel.
2. Lop the top and bottom off the watermelon. Cutting the ends off creates a flat stable surface so the watermelon can stand on its own. It also shows you where the rind starts, which is handy when you want to be able to see how far into the flesh you’re trimming.
3. Place one flat surface down and begin to carve down the side. Start trimming off a small band so you can clearly see where rind is being removed and the flesh exposed. Cut deeper if it’s still too pale, until you expose more of the bright red goodness! Continue carving down the sides until you have all the rind off.
4. Now you can cut thick or thin slices off the big piece.
5. Cut each slice into rows and then cut across the rows to get your dice on.
This method saves you time and watermelon! In just a couple minutes, we cut off 4.5 pounds of rind and wasted almost none of that juicy meat! If you have people in your life that don’t like to get sticky, diced watermelon is the way to go.
Other notes:
- I recommend using a large serrated knife with deeper teeth when trimming off the big pieces so you’re making a sawing action and less likely to slip from applying a lot of pressure, but any larger sized sharp knife, you are comfortable using, will do.
Now you can enjoy cutting your watermelon the weird way too!
P.S. We had a blast making these videos. We couldn’t stop laughing creating the slow-mo of the slices falling down. TURN UP YOUR VOLUME for that one. LOL.