Adventures in Produce: Pepino Melon

 

    As a child, I remember that I used to walk down the fruit aisle just to see all the fruit that was offered. I would take note of the different types of shapes, colors, and patterns that each fruit had to help distinguish them all. It was one of the simple things that I found entertaining about our trips to the grocery store.

    For this assignment, I found myself falling into my childhood habit once again as I walked through the fruit section at my local HEB. I took my time looking at all the fruit that the store had to offer, noting which options I had yet to try. Options such as star fruit and passion fruit tempted me, that was until I spotted a fruit I had never seen before. A fruit with a pale green skin and purple stripes caught my attention. It was about the size of my hand and was oval-shaped. The label under the fruits read "Pepino Melon". 

    Upon taking the fruit home and doing a bit of research, I learned that the pepino melon is a fruit that is native to South America. It is commonly referred to as pepino dulce, meaning "sweet melon". For preparation purposes, I looked up how people typically ate this fruit and found that many ate it as is, so I decided to do the same thing.

    I began by cutting off a small portion of the top and bottom of the fruit. Which revealed the yellow meat of the fruit. Upon cutting into the fruit, its smell reminded me of cucumber. I then cut down the middle of the fruit to see the entire interior. This allowed me to see the yellow meat inside along with the fruit's seeds. Cutting into the fruit was very easy. It wasn't hard to cut into at all, nor was it messy. By the end of cutting up the fruit and removing its skin, my hands weren't sticky or visibly dirty.

    The taste of this fruit reminded me a lot of cucumber. While the texture of this fruit was soft like a pear. In truth, the fruit wasn't as sweet as I had hoped for it to be. I decided to research pictures of a fully ripe pepino melon and found that compared to my fruit, fully ripe pepino melons have a more orange colored meat rather than a yellow one. I felt it safe to assume that I had chosen a melon that wasn't fully ripe. So I went back to the store and bought another pepino melon.

    This time, I chose a pepino melon that had more of a gold-colored top since I read that gold color is an indicator of a ripe pepino melon. The texture, smell, and toughness was the same as the first melon, but the color of the meat of the fruit was different. It had a more orange color to it rather than a yellow color. Now this one tasted slightly sweeter. Still wasn't as sweet as I had hoped for, though. I tried a suggestion of adding salt to the melon and that made it taste even sweeter. 

    Although I had expected this fruit to be sweeter, I did like it with a touch of salt. I would like to try it again in the future. Perhaps by using it in a recipe. But for a new fruit, I enjoyed how easy it was to prepare and the fruit's taste that resembled other commonly known fruits.