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.
I discovered it was by scrolling though YouTube. It was a bento packing video from Bento Noods where she packed some watermelon kimchi for husband. I was fascinated as I never considered using the rind to use as a kimchi. Since I had multiple watermelons at home (I usually end up hoarding a couple watermelons) I decided to give it a try. I consulted a couple of videos including Korean Vegan and Logagm and made up my own recipe.
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
Watermelon Kimchi
Ingredients
- Half watermelon 2lbs
- 1/8 cup of sea salt
- 1 cup of watermelon juice
- 1 tablespoon chopped ginger
- 6 cloves of garlic
- 1 tbsp rice vinegar
- 1 tbsp honey
- 3 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 green onion chopped
- 1 tbsp white sesame
- 4 tbsp Korean red pepper flakes
Instructions
- Scoop the inside flesh out. Place some of the flesh into a blender to blend into watermelon juice
- Remove the outer rind
- Cut into bite size pieces
- Place rind into a bowl with salt and mix
- Let it sit for 1 hour
- After one hour, dump out the excess liquids. Fill the bowl with fresh water and wash the rinds with your hands. Dump out the water and repeat for 2X.
- In another bowl combine watermelon juice, ginger garlic, green onion, soy sauce, honey, vinegar and Korean red pepper flakes. Mix
- Once the rinds are rinsed and washed, combine with the sauce.
- You can eat it right away or let it sit in the fridge up to 2 weeks.
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