Find the perfect fruit: these handy tips will help you choose a watermelon that you, your family and your guests are sure to love.
Choosing the perfect watermelon is a pretty important job. Watermelons are huge, so if you end up with one that isn’t everything you dreamed, then you either end up having to eat a whole lot of less-than-tasty fruit, or throw it in the compost heap. Plus everyone loves watermelon on a hot sunny day, so make sure you know how to choose a watermelon that won’t disappoint.
Thankfully, you’re about to be armed with a little bit of knowledge that will prevent you from ever having to deal with an imperfect watermelon, so hold on to your hats! Don’t worry, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or a watermelon scientist) to figure this out!
How to Choose a Watermelon
First of all, try to choose the watermelon that seems heaviest for its size. This is true for most produce, really, but especially for watermelons.
Next, you’ll want to look for the yellow or white-ish spot. This is where the watermelon rested on the ground as it was growing and ripening. A light yellow spot is great, but the deeper, creamier yellow color is the best if you can find it! This will mean your watermelon is really sweet and ripe!
Also look for the stem and try to find one where you can actually see a little piece of the shriveled stem still attached to the melon. This means that the watermelon was on the vine long enough for the vines to dry up and die back and it’s good and ripe!
If you see all these brown marks (called webbing) on the end of your watermelon, you might think that it shows damage and is the sign of an inferior melon, but you’d be wrong! All that webbing comes from bees doing their work and is a sign that your melon is extra sweet!
One final trick: The taller, skinnier melons are the male melons and are less sweet and more watery, the rounder melons are the female melons and tend to be much sweeter!
So this melon that I’m showing you here is almost perfect, except for the fact that the yellow spot is still a little pale. It was a pretty good one though when we cut into it! No disappointment from anyone in my house that weekend! 🙂
The Perfect Watermelon Checklist
- Weight/size ratio
- Find the yellow spot
- Check the stem
- Check for webbing
- Shape!
So that’s how you choose the perfect watermelon! I took these pictures really quickly the other day when Jack was in the tub and begging for watermelon when he got out, so they may look a little dark, but I wanted to make sure to share this tip with you now at the beginning of summer so you’ll be able to use it all season! Happy watermeloning!
MORE HELPFUL TIPS LIKE THIS!
- How to Cut a Watermelon
- The Butter in the Glass Trick
- The Lemon in the Jar Trick
- The Secret Language of Peppers
- The Creek Line House Food Ideas and Recipes Archives
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.