Cantaloupes are sweet fragrant melons that have very tender and juicy pinkish-orange flesh when ripe. But the problem is, “how to tell if a cantaloupe is ripe?”
Eat them alone, in a fruit salad, or with a variety of other foods such as prosciutto and balsamic reduction. The key to enjoying a cantaloupe is to eat one that is perfectly ripe. Immature cantaloupes can be tough and taste almost bitter.
Don’t buy a melon from the store or pick from your garden if you aren’t confident it’s ripe.
How To Tell If A Cantaloupe Is Ripe? By Directions
• Pick up the cantaloupe and observe its weight in your hand. If it’s heavy for its size, it’s more likely to come.
• Examine the skin of the melon in question. You will see that it almost seems to have two layers; a raised, ridged, gray-beige layer over a smooth layer of a different color. The color windows between the ridges should be yellow in color on at least half of the cantaloupe. If these patches are green all over the fruit, the melon is ripe.
• Smell the cantaloupe. It shouldn’t take much effort to get a strong smell from a sweet scent. If the melon has no scent, or if the smell doesn’t smell like a perfect melon, the cantaloupe hasn’t ripened yet.
• Squeeze the cantaloupe gently. A perfectly ripe cantaloupe will yield very lightly to a firm squeeze, especially at one end. A ripe melon will be completely hard and solid. Do not, however, choose a melon that is too soft or even spongy; these are signs of rot rather than ripeness.
When is a cantaloupe ripe?
Examples of cantaloupes include honeydew melons, Galia melons, and cantaloupe melons. You can tell whether the melon is ripe by the following characteristics:
Weight: The same applies to the sugar melon: the heavier the specimen, the riper it is.
Smell: You can recognize a ripe cantaloupe mainly by its smell. The sweet, fruity smell is particularly noticeable at the base of the stem. Caution: If the melon smells fermented, it is overripe.
Pressure test: Gently press into the melon at the base of the stem. If the melon can be pressed in, it is ripe.
If you bought an Unripe Cantaloupe
Cantaloupe which is not yet ripe is not particularly tasty. Throwing away a whole cantaloupe unused is still a pity. Use the melon peel to make a melon jam. Then the purchase was not entirely in vain