Watermelon and Sea Salt

Salted watermelon? Bollocks. Why ruin a perfectly good, sweet melon with gobs of salt? Salt is a savory mineral and has no place in sweet things. Or so I thought.

Watermelon: Take it a grain (or twelve) of salt

For more than half my life, I regarded the salting of watermelon as some inexplicable aberration, like plunging peanuts in Pepsi or deep-frying peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But then...but then, one salts margaritas. And what is olive juice in a martini but salty brine? Some even cast a bit of salt in their beers with a squeeze of lime.

Counterintuitive as it may seem, salt can bring out flavors that are already present in foods. In small doses, anyway. Put enough of it in and you'll get nothing but salt.

What finally got to me to try a dash of the stuff on melon was the way I make whipped cream. Years and years ago, I picked up an Austrian trick of adding a tiny amount — a knifepoint — of fine salt to heavy cream when whipping. It enhances the sweetness of the sugar in the whipped cream and somehow makes the whole thing more creamy. If you taste the salt, though, it's too much. It's there as a foil.

And so, thinking something similar may work on melons after all, I one day strew a bit of rough French sea salt over a slice I'd just cut. Ah, what a fool I'd been. Watermelon alone — a good one, anyway — hardly seems to need any adornment. Gilding the lily and all that. But needing and wanting are different beasts and there's hardly a slice of juicy, sweet watermelon that doesn't want a bit of salt.

You'll want to use more than the knifepoint I put in whipped cream. Give it a good scattering. Don't bother with the ionized iodized granulated salt that comes in squat blue tubes. A bit too close to licking batteries. Flaky kosher or Maldon salts are better. They lend a bit of crunch to each bite and set up a great contrast between the enhanced sweetness of the melon and pinpoints of brine as they melt. The salt I use is Fleur de Sel de Guérande, a hand-harvested sea salt gathered along the coast of Brittany. Any decent sea salt will do, so use one you know and like, but I enjoy the Guérande salt because its rough, chunky texture is a counterpoint to the juicy, giving melon in each bite.

Goes well with:

• Mark Bitterman's 2010 book Salted. I have several books on salt — historical overviews, scholarly stuff, quite dry. Salted, though, is more of a field guide to salts of the world and if I could have only one tome of the stuff, this would be it. I give it a review here.
• Plugged For Your Pleasure: The Melon-Aged Cocktail — It's hot this summer. Before chilling it, why not spike your watermelon with something a little classier than grain alcohol, something like arrack punch?
• When you're done with the melon itself, be sure to save the rind for making pickled watermelon rind with ginger and try the recipe for the watermelon agua fresca on the same page (oh, hey, is that salt I see in the recipe?).

Plugged For Your Pleasure: The Melon-Aged Cocktail

Barrel-aged cocktails are all the rage these days in certain circles and I can attest that some of them are hands-down delicious. But consider for a moment the melon-aged cocktail. Or is it the cocktail-aged melon? Either way, it's a winner.

From the highbrow (Charentais melons splashed with port wine) to the low (tailgate watermelons spiked with whatever liquor is handy), alcohol and melons have long enjoyed cozy relations. Since by trade and inclination, I travel in both rarefied and more earthy circles, I combined them recently in the form of a simple backyard watermelon infused with fancy punch. Admittedly, the aging in this case is simply overnight, but it's enough to give the alcohol a smoother, vaguely sweeter, edge.

And not just any punch: arrack punch, a funky, rum-heavy concoction once common in the flowing bowls of previous centuries, but little seen in the last 80 years. There's no reason, however, that you couldn't spike a watermelon with a pre-made cocktail: say, 8-12 ounces for a 10-pound melon. An enormous margarita, perhaps, or if you favor tarter tastes, a massive Negroni.

Until recently, the primary ingredient for the punch I chose — Batavia arrack — was no longer available in the United States. However, thanks to importer Eric Seed at Haus Alpenz, the 100 proof Indonesian spirit made of fermented rice and molasses is once more available. Combined with Jamaican rum, lime, sugar, and tea, it's just the thing to add a lightly boozy and slightly Baroque touch to Independence Day cookouts.

Arrack Punched Watermelon

One 10-11lb watermelon
6-10 oz of arrack punch

For this preparation, cut a round hole in the top of a chilled watermelon. Why round? Because a square hole may sometimes lead to cracks spreading out from its corners. Gently remove the plug and trim away most of the red flesh from its interior. Next, remove a small amount of flesh from the melon itself: just a small amount, enough to make a small cavity to hold liquor as it seeps into the flesh.

Then slowly pour liquor into the hole. My 11-lb melon easily absorbed one cup (250ml) of punch. It may help to pour in 2 ounces at a time, wait until that is absorbed, then add more until the melon just can't take any more. You may also speed the process by gently inserting a bamboo skewer at various angles into the flash — though be careful not to puncture the rind at any point. It seems obvious, but: leaks. Replace the round plug and keep in the refrigerator until you're ready to serve.

Note that the purpose of this particular melon is not to get you staggeringly drunk, but rather to showcase complementary tastes. After all, it's less than an ounce of punch for each pound of melon. If the staggers is what you after, consider straight rum, vodka, tequila, or Confederate chloroform. Any way you slice it, you're on your own.

Confederate chloroform? Why, it's just moonshine. We get that around here, too.

Watermelon Pickles

Jessica Harris has written more cookbooks than I own pairs of shoes, testament as much to her literary output as my somewhat limited sense of fashion. Yet I was happy to oblige when she asked me a while back for recipes to include in a book she was working on concerning side dishes and accompaniments. The piquillo ketchup, a killer recipe I adapted from an early canning manual, made the cut, and I’ll post images and notes when I make my next batch.

The watermelon pickle recipe she included, though, lends itself more readily to cocktails, so we’ll start with that (and get to the cocktails in a later post). Watermelon pickles, or preserves, using just the rind are a Southern standard, if maybe just a hair old-fashioned these days. I still whip up an occasional batch to accompany sandwiches, roast pork, and other savories that could use a little pep. More recently, I’ve been playing with them in drinks. Hey, those who don’t mind less gin in their martini do the same thing with olives, so no grief on that front, please.

Start with a 6-7 pound melon. Make your life easier by peeling it with a slingshot vegetable peeler before you make your first cut. Some recipes tell you to scrape off all the red flesh as well as the peel. The peel needs to go, but leave a little red on the rind. It certainly doesn’t hurt the flavor and it gives a fancy rose collar to the pickles. These make a slightly softer pickle than older recipes that call for impregnating the rind with lye or alum. You could take that route, but…meh. Too much hassle for minimal return.

8 cups of watermelon rind, cut into ½” squares
q.s. kosher salt
4 (770 g) cups sugar
2 cups (470 ml) cider vinegar
12 whole cloves
1 tsp (2.5 g) ground cinnamon
2 small lemons, either untreated or scrubbed, sliced into very thin rounds
2 oz/60g (about a finger’s length) of ginger, sliced into very thin coins

Generously salt the chunks of rind, place in a colander, and set inside a stainless steel or glass bowl overnight. They’ll throw off a bunch of brine. Rinse, drain, and throw out the brine. Place rinds in a non-reactive pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil. Boil for ten minutes. Drain in a colander, but do not rinse. Add the sugar, vinegar, and the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Add the drained chunks, return to a boil and boil gently for ten minutes.

Ladle into sterilized canning jars and process for long-term storage or allow the whole mass to cool in the syrup and ladle into plastic quart tubs for short-term fridge storage.















Goes well with

• Jessica Harris’ On The Side
• Pickled by Lucy Norris
• Fine Preserving by Catherine Plagemann (with MFK Fisher’s snarky annotations)
• Christine Ferber’s Mes Confitures

Lagniappe: Watermelon Aqua Fresca

Occasionally, you’ll get a dud melon with flat-tasting flesh, even if the rind is perfectly usable. If you’re the hog-keeping type, I suppose the flesh'd make good slop. Compost it if you’re so inclined. I feed mine to the Disposall. When the flesh is firm, ripe, and dripping, there’s no better way to enjoy it than sitting on the porch and spitting seeds as far as you can. Your neighbor’s yard, for instance.

But when you’ve got something in between—or just an overabundance of fantastic flesh—treat yourself to a fruit cooler the Mexicans call agua fresca. These aguas frescas (or “fresh waters”) are generally fruits or vegetables reduced with a blender to chunky liquids, bolstered with water and some sweetener such as honey or sugar, then served maybe with bigger slices of the fruits floating. In Mexico and northern Mexico (e.g. San Diego, where I live), you’ll see tables at markets loaded with huge jars called jarras of maybe 3-4 gallon capacity partially filled with cucumber, tamarind, strawberry, jamaica, mango, kiwi, and other flavors. In absence of any tequila, mezcal, or gin, you can even drink them straight.

4 cups chunked watermelon flesh
3 cups cool water
½ cup 2:1 simple syrup
q.s. salt (up to ½ tsp)

Don’t bother seeding the flesh. We’re taking the easy train on this one. Put all the flesh into a large blender with enough water (up to three cups) to fill it to ¾ capacity. Cover and blend. The seeds—some worse for the wear—will float to the top. Just skim them off. Strain into a pitcher, top off with any remaining water, and stir in the syrup and salt. Stir to dissolve. Add some chunks of watermelon flesh either to the pitcher or to individual glasses, depending on how you plan to serve it.

Pour over ice. If you plan to use it as a mixer, ease off the water (using maybe only two cups) and fortify with your spirit of choice.


Goes well with

• Gin or tequila
• The Art of Mexican Cooking by Dianne Kennedy
• Larousse de la Cocina Mexicana
• Baja: Cooking on the Edge by Deborah Schneider
• Lazy-ass days

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