Watermelon rinds pickled

The introduction

Well, I don’t really love jams, if you want to know the truth, but from all the jams I’ve eaten I love watermelon jam most of all. Maybe you know jam a little different from me, I’m talking about jam that has those fruit pieces in it. I googled and it said this thing was called “pickled watermelon rinds”, so rinds it is then!

Anyways, whatever it is, I love it and people usually made it sound like preparing it was some kind of hard work and they always whined about it, it was like they were obliged to prepare those watermelon rinds and they had to spend much time doing it and so on and so forth. So, I had this idea in my head that whatever I could do, I wouldn’t be able to prepare watermelon rinds and I wasn’t going to either. However, there was this time once, when we had a watermelon eaten and when I looked at the skin it was pretty thick and I knew that watermelon rinds were made from thick watermelon skin _ the thicker the skin was, the better! And there was this sudden thought _ could I make some watermelon rinds?! Well, that was, I guess, possible in a way and I just took those skins and put them in the fridge, because it was already late night and I would google some recipes of that watermelon rinds the next day and then I would know whether I could make some watermelon rinds or not and whether it was so difficult to make that I would never try that or not. But  I had this feeling inside that I could make it and I was pretty determined to do it. You know, sometimes I just have this idea and feeling inside me that keeps bugging me until I do that thing and that was this case, too, I just couldn’t shake the idea of preparing watermelon rinds from my head and I just had to do it, I knew that, so there was no point in resisting the urge, if you want to know the truth.

So, the next day I surfed the net and found many recipes of pickled watermelon rinds and they were pretty much the same, of course, but there were some of them in Georgian language, which were different, I mean, they used sort of different ingredients and it was kind of buzzing, and trust me, I read many recipes and I just couldn’t decide which one was better and which one I should have chosen. They had this one ingredient, basically, that was different. Some used baking soda, some used other stuff for that, and baking soda was the best option for me, of course, so I chose to read those recipes which had baking soda in them. After much reading done, I chose one recipe, which was pretty accurate and detailed and well-written, so I decided to prepare watermelon rinds with that recipe. Well, I was preparing watermelon rinds for the first time and when I saw this recipe and then saw this thing written at the end of the recipe which read that she had 50 years of experience in preparing watermelon rindsand she knew what she was writing, it seemed like I should have chosen that recipe. I didn’t want my watermelon skins to be wasted and of course, I didn’t want my work to be wasted, I mean, everyone would think: “what if I do it wrong and nothing comes out?!” and I was thinking that, too. I didn’t want my work to be just a waste of time and expenses and ingredients and stuff like that. I wanted my watermelon rinds to be perfect… okay, maybe nearly perfect… or good, at least. So, with that recipe, I knew what I had to do and I started preparing watermelon rinds.

Ingredients:

• 1 kilogramme watermelon skins
• 1.5 kilogrammes sugar
• 5 cups of water
• 2 tbs baking soda
• Vanilla
• 2 tbs lemon juice

Preparation process

Preparing the skins

Okay, first of all, you should prepare the skins. You know, those are the things that is left when you eat watermelon. Remember , that they should be thick. Mine were nearly 1 cm thick, so that’s pretty thick, if you want to know the truth. I guess, that’s the ideal occasion for the thickness of those watermelon skins! So, you should peel the skins and get rid of those red pieces, too. There should just be left that thing between the outer skin and the red mass. Of course, it’s easier to peel the skins when they are cut into smaller pieces. You can cut them into smaller pieces, but not too small and that way you can easily peel them and get rid of the red stuff. After doing that, you can cut them into smaller pieces and have different shapes or whatever. I cut them with a cute shape-cutter and they were like really small, I mean, they were maybe something like 1 or 2 square centimeters each. Some people like it when the rinds are large or kind of big, but I don’t. I just love those small pieces and they are really lovely and easy to eat and you don’t have to cut them again while eating or bite them a couple of times, you just have to eat them and that’s all. And you don’t get your mouth dirty, I mean, nothing can stick on them or something when you eat those small pieces of watermelon rinds in contrast of large pieces.

Well, the skins are not done yet. Now you have to stick fork or something like that to puncture the pieces. I did that on both sides once or twice, it depended on the size of the piece.

And now it’s time to prepare some mixture so that we can put those skins and let them be like that for some time. For that we will need to mix 2 tbs baking soda in 2.5 cup (250 ml) boiled hot water. Then we should add it to 5 cups (250 ml) of cold water. After that we should put those skin pieces into this baking soda and water mixture and let them be like that for 12 hours.

The second step

The second step is to wash the skin pieces thoroughly after being rested in baking soda mixture for 12 hours. You should wash the skin pieces very well, for  a couple of times. And then, after that, you should boil some water and put those skin pieces into that. When the water boils, let this everything be like that for 20 minutes.

While your skins are boiling in the water, you should make some syrup. For that you will need 5 cups of water and 1 kilogramme sugar. You should let that boil for some minutes and by that time you should take those skin pieces from that boiling water and put them into the syrup. After the syrup with the skin pieces boils, you should remove scum and let it boil for 7 minutes. After that, you should turn the gas off and let this be like that _ skin pieces in the syrup _ for another 12 hours.

The third step

The third and probably the final step is to add the rest of the sugar (500 grams) to the syrup where the skin pieces are and let it boil on a low heat until it is ready. The skins should be golden colour and kind of transparent and the syrup should be thick. And my mother told me how to know when it’s ready, as I had no idea at all. Well, you should take a drop of the syrup and drop it on a plate and move this plate or turn it on edges and if the drop stays the same, then the watermelon rinds are done! Now you can add some vanilla and lemon juice to the mixture, or you can add them some time before.

So, everything is done! But, hey, not everything! People prepare these things to eat in winter, mainly. Well, that’s at least how it is here, in Georgia. So, we  have to preserve it, right? And we have to put them in jars or something like that.

Well, I thought that would be kind of a problem, because I didn’t have anything for that. I’ve seen how my grandmother makes juices with fruit in jars and I didn’t have any of those things, so I thought I would have to go  all the way to Kakheti and do that preserving thing there. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do that, because my mother told me that those jams don’t really need all those stuff that juice with fruit needs and I could just pour them into jars and that would be all. I was really glad to hear that. I had already prepared some jars, I mean, I had washed them and all. So, it just needed some sterilization, or didn’t even need that, I really don’t know. I didn’t really sterilize them, I just poured some boiling water on each of them and then I put the watermelon rinds in them, so if anything happens, that means that I should have sterilized the jars or something like that, I guess.

So, to tell you the truth, when I tasted my watermelon rinds, I just couldn’t believe how tasty it was. It tasted like my childhood, because I used to eat watermelon rinds as a child and I remember, I used to have many watermelon rinds back then. Then it all became hard to find and I hadn’t eaten watermelon rinds for a long time until just recently, when it was New Year or even autumn when I visited my aunt and cousins and they had opened a jar full of watermelon rinds because they just wanted to eat them so badly and that was when we visited them and I ate those watermelon rinds, too. Turned out my cousin love this jam, too, I didn’t know that, so we just have that in common among other things.

Anyways, what I wanted to say is that, when I tasted my watermelon rinds, I was pretty surprised, because it all tasted great, everything was great and I just smiled with satisfaction that I could prepare something that I couldn’t even think of preparing I was so sure that I couldn’t make it because it was very difficult. Turned out, it wasn’t so difficult, it just needed some time and maybe that’s why people were whining about it, I don’t know. All I know, is that with all that whining I got this idea in my mind that preparing watermelon rinds was kind of impossible and only experienced ones could make it. well, guess what?! It’s not like that at all! Anyone can make watermelon rinds and I proved that to myself just recently!

So, about the consistency and other stuff. Well, watermelon rinds should be sweet, of course, as it’s jam, not something else. And the pieces should be crispy _ that’s the main thing everyone loves about watermelon rinds,  I guess! Because, if it’s not crispy, many of us would not love that jam, or at least, I wouldn’t love it, because this crispiness gives it so much power over you that you want to eat it again and again and it’s hard to stop eating it, if you want to know the truth. So, I was really happy that it turned out crispy, because as I’ve mentioned above, all I wanted was it to be that crispy that I remembered from my childhood. And now that I have experienced how it should be done, I have other thick watermelon skins waiting to be turned into watermelon rinds.

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