I love the pickling process – putting ingredients together and then waiting and hoping something delicious turns out. From my experience it requires patience and faith, two things I guess I’m a bit low on, since, despite loving all thinks pickled, I pretty much stay away from pickling things myself. Not this week. This week, I finally tried to pickle watermelon rind.
Eating the pink part of the watermelon, scraping the rinds, chopping the ginger, and then watching the rind turn translucent as it boiled in the pot – the whole process was like a fun science project (minus the stressful part where you have to make flawless posterboards describing your steps).
Two days later, after letting the flavors mellow and the pickle pickle, I discovered that pickling also requires determination. The flavor was not what I hoped for. My perfect pickle has a slightly vinegary, refreshing, even maybe complex flavor (as in, you can taste the spices and not just the vinegar) and this wasn’t it. Overall, I can’t really say it tasted like anything more than just vinegar and sugar…a lot of sugar. Back to the drawing board.
All was not lost though. I did get to taste something completely new, and I did earn my seven days. With these seven days, I am committed to figuring out how to create the perfect pickle.
Along the way, I also managed to pick up some interesting watermelon facts worth sharing. First, Balkan folklore includes stories of melons that, when kept for more than 10 days, become vampire melons and roll around on the ground trying to trip up the living. Second, it’s recently been discovered that watermelon rind has a chemical that mimics the effects of Viagra. (That should fit in nicely with my plan to be a gray old lady with a couple cats and the perfect recipe for pickled watermelon.)
For anyone interested, I used a variation on this Pickled Watermelon Rind Chutney from Epicurious for my pickle.
