Whole Pickled Watermelon

Elena Butuc

This recipe was automatically translated from Romanian. View original here

Pickled watermelons are the most delicious pickles and everyone's favorite. I tried to make pickles in various conditions and methods, both on the balcony and in the cellar, with and without honey - the conclusion is not to complicate things and to follow some simple but important steps.

This year I had my own watemelons in the garden, very good and I managed to pickle melons in August, now in September I already tasted half a barrel! So good to take some pictures and at every step of the recipe, I have been struggling for several years to catch the whole process and we don't get to complete the recipe. I really wanted to show you all the aspects and specifications, so it became the recipe I "hunted" the most, about 5 years.

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Ingredients

Metric US

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Baby watermelons

10 kg

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Salt

2 cups

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Sugar

1 cup

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Water

10 l

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Greens/Herbs

500 g

cherry leaves, horseradish, currants and vines

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Green apples

3 kg

optional

Step by step

The first and most important step - to choose the right melons.

They must be small melons, various varieties and preferably not very ripe, you will see in step 10 below and why.

So, in order to have good melons, you have to make sure and put various varieties.

Prepare the barrel, wash the melons, apples and greens.

Put some of the leaves at the bottom of the barrel and start to arrange the melons as well as possible.

In the remaining holes you can add greener summer apples, they are also delicious pickled.

Here the barrel arranged halfway - watch the apples and melons come.

Continue like this until the barrel is full.

Here I put one of 100 liters.

Don't forget to put the greens among the melons and necessarily a generous layer of vine leaves on top - so that they don't bloom on top when you open the barrel and it is no longer hermetically sealed.

Now we prepare the brine - to 10 liters of water add 2 glasses of salt and 1 glass of sugar, mix well until it dissolves and pour into the barrel.

Repeat the above procedure until you fill the barrel with brine - you may need about 40-50 liters of water, depending on how well you filled the barrel and its size.

Seal tightly and leave in the cellar for about 1.5-2 months.

This is what it looks like after 2 months, the melons change color and soften a little.

As you take from them it would be good to improvise a press to be in brine.

I noticed that the melons with thicker skin (the white ones) pickled more slowly instead they were perfect in texture. The others got pickled faster but dropped a lot because they were more ripe.

There is no major difference in taste, but I would like you to eat melon core, not just the peel. Last year I had very ripe melons and it was half empty after they were pickled.