Honeydew Melons: Your 'Sweet' Key To Health

Of all the melon varieties, honeydew melons have the most mouth-watering taste. Belonging to the cultivar's group of muskmelons, honeydew melons occur in numerous varieties like the Crenshaw, Casaba (from Kasaba, a town in Turkey), Persian, and Winter. Honeydew melons provide one of the best options for a quick bite, especially for those who believe in leading a healthy lifestyle. It was Marco Polo who first discovered the Persians drying honeydew melons to enhance their aroma and flavor. Cut honeydew melons with seeds make an excellent snack. Not just that, honeydew melons can be dried and kept like raisins and its seeds can be roasted. Honeydew melons can also be made into lip-smacking kebabs!

Honeydew melons provide a number of alternatives for your healthy diet. They are rich in Vitamin C, potassium, pantothenic acid, and Vitamin B6 that help to overcome high blood pressure, skin disorders and other related problems of the circulatory system. These melons are at their nutritive best when ripe. But there is one risk associated with ripe honeydew melons- they are highly perishable. After a long and tedious research, scientists have finally come up with a solution to keep honeydew melons at their 'sweetest best'. The solution is very simple indeed. All you need is to drown the melons in a water-bath containing a special calcium-amino acid solution right after harvest. The calcium in the solution penetrates the rind to make it firmer and increases its shelf life. Thus the aging process of melons is arrested to a great extent. However, growers have to be a little careful deciding the time of picking of honeydew melons. Once picked, honeydew melons do not develop further sweetness. Hence, a great attention must be directed towards the picking of these melons.

A little expertise is needed to identify and pick honeydew melons at their best. Merely picking up by its rind and color are not always the safest options to pick up the right melon. Choose a melon that has no soft spots. Shake it up from side to side. If you hear the shaking of the seeds, it is perfect to be taken along. Honeydews grow best in January and February. However, if it is early in the season, choose a melon that is ripe among the bunch. If the 'seed-shaking' is not quite distinct, keep the melon in a kitchen towel for a day or two. Melons that are picked up prior to the loosening of their seeds will not ripen at all. So growers must be all the careful when picking up their produce to be sent to the market.

These little tips are highly important to preserve the rocking taste of honeydew melons. It's sweet taste blends easily to lend an exotic flavor to any dish. Believed to have originated in France, honeydew melons made their inroads to the US nearly a century ago and have been highly popular since then. With added health benefits and numerous recipe options, honeydew melons are rapidly getting stacked into the grocery shelves!