EASY Pickled Watermelon Rind

You may also enjoy last weeks post: Curried Watermelon Rind & Mango Salad.  Below are directions to make the easiest pickled melon rinds ever.  This is great for a small batch that you want to eat within the month, not for large batch preserving.

1. Cut watermelon rind into workable sections.  Peel with sharp knife and remove pink fruit.
2. Stuff small jars with slices.  Boil water in the microwave or kettle.
3. Add to each small jar: 2 tsp salt, 2 tsp sugar, and 3 Tbs cider vinegar. (You can experiment with adding whole spices like cloves or mustard, crystallized ginger, more sugar, more vinegar or alcoholic beverages.)
4. Top with boiling water.  
5. Using an oven mitt or rag, shake to mix.
6. Unless you use proper canning/preserving procedures*, refrigerate jars when cool.
7. For best results let soak close to a week before enjoying. 

 

*If you want to preserve a large batch, you may want to use a proper recipe like these sweet Pickled Watermelon Rinds on allrecipes.com.

You may want to taste one rind after several days to one week of soaking in the basic pickle to decide how to proceed.  For instance, if you think they are too sweet or too salty, you can dump the liquid and refill with something more suitable to your tastes.  Today I dumped the initial liquid and set up each jar with different flavors, then I refilled with boiling water in order to get all the flavors to fully open up. I expect to have some very tasty watermelon pickles in another two days. 

• To one jar I added black peppercorns, whole yellow mustard seeds, a large  sliced clove of garlic, and 2.5 tablespoons of cider vinegar. Topped with boiling water.
• To the other jar I added a heaping tablespoon of pure date syrup (sylan), two sliced pieces of unsweetened crystallized ginger, and 2 tablespoons of  cider vinegar.  Topped with boiling water.  

Please try this recipe with other kinds of melon rinds and let me know what you think!

Update:

I made up the recipe above to get the flavor of pickling in less time. However, since then I've been really into natural fermenting, with all the probiotic benefits of lactic acid preserving. If you would like to try this, make a brine just salty enough to float an egg. (About 1/2 cup of salt for a gallon of water.) Use any flavorings you like, but skip the vinegar. Leave the rinds at room temperature for 5-8 days until they taste and smell vinegary. Make sure the rinds have not been cooked/pasteurized/etc, because you want to cultivate the natural lactobacilis in the fruit.