Watermelon Rind

I've heard of pickled watermelon rind, that Southern specialty, but I never realized how many different ways you could use watermelon rind, or even what it actually is.

I suppose I always thought it was the part of the watermelon that was left over, but I was wrong. It's the pale green part of the watermelon, in-between the outer skin and the pink inner flesh. One has to cut off the outer, dark-green skin, after you've eaten the pink skin, and that will leave you with the rind to use in recipes.


With the watermelons we got at the farmer's market, I'm hoping that we'll have enough to make something interesting with it. The watermelon rind smoothies looked like we could maybe fiddle them into something edible for us, or even the idea of a watermelon rind curry!


This site had a lot of recipes that look worth exploring, at least for the concepts of how to cook the rind and what tastes good with it: http://www.watermelonrind.com/

Watermelon rind juice looked very easy, so that may be what we try.
Juice 2 pounds of watermelon rind, add 1 tsp. of organic honey to it, and you've got watermelon rind juice!  We froze ours, so I'm thinking maybe we could just blend it in the blender with a little honey and make a slushie out of it, maybe even add a little lime juice to brighten it up.

LOW HISTAMINE - to make watermelon rind juice low histamine, just ditch the honey and add a low histamine friendly sweetener. Sugar seems to be accepted on many low histamine lists, or some fruits.