Freezing melon is insanely easy to do. It takes no blanching or any other cooking. All you need are ripe or even over ripe melons, two knives, a chef's knife and a paring knife (my paring knife happens to be ceramic, that is why the blade is white. A stainless steel or carbon steel will work just as well), a cookie sheet or other flat pan, a freezer and some freezer bags (do not use storage bags, there is a big difference in results)
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| Cut melons in half using a 6" or 8" chef's knife |
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| Take out seeds but leave as much of the placenta behind as possible. the cavity should be groovy, not smooth |
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| Cut into sections, again use a chef's knife. Note the bad parts are still on |
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| Remove the rind and cut off any bad/soft parts. I use a paring knife for this. |
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| Cut into cubes using a paring knife |
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| Put on a cookie sheet or other flat container in a single layer |
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Put into the freezer and let the melon cubes freeze and than put into a marked freezer bag when frozen (there is such a bag under the cookie sheet)
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We use the frozen melons for several things-melon daiquiris, melon smoothies, melon ice cubes in drinks in the heat of summer (Eugene's favorite is melon cubes in iced tea spiked with lemonade), you can even use them thawed in fruit salad, though the texture is a bit different than fresh but the flavor is still there (unless you used storage bags instead of freezer bags, than the flavor may be off/stale from the freezer burn that will happen within a month of freezing. these should last at least 9 months in your freezer.
3 comments:
I loved your post! I have submitted it to the Homestead Resource Guide at www.theadventurebite.com/homestead-resource-guide-link-ups under the Melon recipe/preservation link up. Would love to have you join us with other great articles like this :)
Why do i need to use a cookie sheet instead of a freezer bag to freeze a melon or any other cruits such as blueberries?
If you dump the fruit into a freezer bag unfrozen you will end up with a largish chunk of frozen fruit that will take a hammer and chisel on order to be able to use the fruit in a size less than a gallon freezer bag. if you freeze the fruit on a baking sheet than you have individual frozen pieces that will not become a big unusable chunk of frozen fruit/ice
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