Watermelon rind surprise

Due to a radical change in my diet brought about by my body's need for a low histamine diet, I was recently looking up the nutritional benefits of watermelon.


Apart from the usual things you'd expect from a fruit, like vitamin C, I discovered that it's also a great source of vitamin A and that the rind is edible!


On reflection, i realized this shouldn't have come as big surprise, since it comes from the same family as the courgette and cucumber (the Cucurbitaceae) , but nevertheless, the idea of not having to fill my organic waste bin with huge slices of heavy skin interested me.


I have to say that my partner's eyes filled with horror when I spoke about my discovery. Not a huge veggie fan in the first place, and certainly not a fan of courgette or cucumber, another edible family member pushed him to say that 'many things are edible but we really don't have to eat them'.


Heedless of the discouragement, I Googled away for recipes and found only Asiatic ones in very salty stir frys. Since i don't like huge amounts of salt I eliminated it and added red peppers, courgette, onions to make a Med veggie stir fry with veggies cooked until soft. Effectively, it tastes just like courgette but with a firmer texture. A great addition to veggie curries. You can equally make chutney from it.


One important thing to do is to cut off the bitter green outer skin and to slice the white rind very thinly (with a little melon flesh attached it also looks interesting too).

and you can juice it...

Small ones for sure. The very, very big ones have fibrous inner skin which is pretty well indigestible. My OH has always used potato peeler on them to take away the outer skin which was alien to me until I saw her mother and sister do the same (neither her brother nor father eat them, so not a gender thing, just as an aside). But then I eat apple skins and the entire core, with very clean organic oranges also the skin, tiny Karat bananas (the red ones) skin and all and various other fruit. We throw away half the goodness with many fruit by not eating those parts. Also, the melon seeds, in some countries they are roasted and added to other food, just like the sunflower and sesame seeds in a decent muesli. Waste not, want not.