Easy Watermelon Kimchi

Summer is almost over (sad face). For me, summer is the abundance of watermelon. When I was young I remember having so many watermelon in the summer time that we were eating a watermelon per week. To this day, I love having watermelon in the summer time. The way I eat it is to cut in half and use a spoon to scoop it out. My whole family eats it like that. However, we usually throw away the rind. While now I know that the rind can be used for cooking and preserving but it wasn’t until recently I decided to try it out and I found the perfect recipe to eat watermelon rind, watermelon kimchi.

What is Kimchi?

Kimchi is basically salted and fermented vegetable in Korean. It can be any type of vegetable. The word kimchi is a generic term for the fermented vegetable. Watermelon kimchi is just taking the rind of the watermelon after finish eating the bulk of the watermelon. I have made cabbage kimchi before and it was great to have homemade kimchi but it was a lot of work. I like watermelon kimchi because it’s simple to make, can eat it right away. The sauce for watermelon kimchi is also easier as the fermented cabbage kimchi needs a rice flour paste which require some effort and time. The ingredients are simple and probably something you might already have on hand or can easily find in a grocery store.

Pro-tip on making watermelon kimchi

• Use watermelon juice for sweetness and helps to form the base of the sauce that you can marinate the rind in
• Peel the outside tougher peel, I’ve tried to salt it without peeling the outside, the texture wasn’t great. I had to stand there and cut off all the peels off the rind.
• Sea salt is generally more salty than regular table salt, so you can start off with less salt if you don’t want the kimchi to be too salty. You can also use table salt. If watermelon rind too salty, add a bit of sugar into the sauce.
• This recipe is slightly spicy, adjust it to your spice tolerance. For best result, should consider using Korean red pepper flakes