Biting into a watermelon is like tasting a slice of summer! Cool, juicy, sweet, and refreshing, it fully equates to the feeling left by summer: a sense of fullness, freshness, and mental upliftment.
Here are some useful tips for our everyday summer life and for prolonging the quality of the watermelon just sliced on your kitchen counter. The goal is to maintain its flavour for as long as possible, consuming it slice by slice at a leisurely pace, without stress and haste.
Carefully choose the watermelon
Quality plays a decisive role in its longevity. A delicious and successful watermelon can only age beautifully in your refrigerator, maintaining the characteristics that give it balance in taste, texture, and aroma.
So, the first thing to do is buy a watermelon that looks and feels good. The size here does not say anything about its quality. However, it is good that its surface is uniform, without bumps and dimples and above all, when you press its edges, our fingers do not sink in.
From there, the next stage of its evaluation is the acoustics it gives us when you hit it: It should sound hollow like you are hitting a drum because then you understand that its flesh is ready in terms of its maturation and, indeed, as juicy as it should be.
How do you store whole watermelon?
If you do not intend to cut the watermelon immediately, store it in a shady and cool place (ideally with a temperature not exceeding 15°C-17°C), away from sunlight. In these conditions and out of the refrigerator, watermelon can remain unchanged for 1 to 2 weeks.
If the watermelon is already ripe, then place it whole in the refrigerator and avoid cutting it until you finally start consuming it. The cool temperature of the fridge will slow the further ripening process, keeping it fresh and tasty for up to 3 weeks (always in the fridge).
How to store sliced watermelon
If you want to store your cut watermelon in the refrigerator, follow these steps: Remove the bottom part of the skin with a sharp knife.
From then on, you can store it in the refrigerator, either in slices, cubes or even in small balls, as long as you first place it in airtight food storage containers (or even with plastic film) so that it preserves its texture and juicy taste for up to one week.
On the other hand, you can easily freeze it if you want, as long as you first remove the skin, then cut the flesh into cubes, remove the pits and lay the cubes, one next to the other, on a tray which you have covered first with greaseproof paper.
Place the tray in the freezer, and as long as the cubes are frozen enough, transfer them to a plastic food bag. In this way, you can use them whenever you want, either one by one or all together, depending on the preparations you have in mind (cocktails, granitas, etc.).
Loukia Chrisovitsanou is a columnist for Cantina. Translated by Paul Antonopoulos.
READ MORE: How to preserve eggplants in the freezer.
