How to Pick Ripe Melons

Video Transcript

"Hi, Christi Ferretti here with Expert Village. Don't you love it when you get home with a melon, slice it open and it has that kind of mealy nasty texture? Not good. So what you want to do when you go to the store to make sure you have a great melon when you get home, kind of inspect it. I used to make fun of my mom. She would go in the store, she'd pick them up, she'd look for five or ten minutes, she'd shake them. I really don't know what all that accomplished. Shaking really doesn't help. But if you look at this melon here particularly as a cantaloupe, which is what we are dealing with today. You want to look for this nice kind of yellow color. If it?s going to be a dark green over the hole thing, its not going to be ripe, its not going to be ready. Its going to be pretty hard, pretty dry. Flavorless. The other thing that's really important, which we've all ready mentioned is shopping seasonally. Melons are a summer fruit. Right now this melon is very expensive. And not extremely flavorful. All though pretty good for this time of year. In July, August, you are going to be able to get a really nice, really ripe, really sweet; cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon. So again looking for the yellow color is going to be key. Also when you look at the ends, you want to make sure you can depress it just lightly. There again don't go being mean to other people?s fruit. But just push lightly on the end, so you you get a little bit of bounce and a little bit of spring. And lastly it never hurts to smell it. When things are cold they don't have as much fragrance, so depending how these are stored, you may not get as much smell off of them. But typically if you put your nose to the end and take a wiff, you should be able to smell that nice sweet fruit in the center. Good luck shopping."