Buying fresh fruit is kind of like gambling, right? You throw down a huge chunk of cash on what looks like a promising pile of fruit, only to get home and discover—oh, no. That peach is mealy, those strawberries are molding beneath the perfect ones on top, and that pineapple? Sawdust inside. And if you have kids? Forget it. You finally get them to eat a piece of fruit, and it turns out to be the one weirdly sour plum that ruins fruit for them until, who knows, next summer.
Anyway—there are a ton of hacks people swear by for picking better fruit! Sure, some of them are nonsense. But a lot of them are actually helpful if you pay attention. Honestly, it’s worth writing down or memorizing a few if you’re someone who gets burned by fruit roulette on the regular.
So, watermelons. Big, heavy, mysterious. They’ve all got those pale, yellowish blotches on one side of them, and if you’re new to the watermelon game, that looks a little scary. But those are called field spots. That just means the watermelon was sitting on the ground while it grew. The more golden, or creamy-yellow that spot is, the better. While focusing on these good signs is great, it’s equally important to know how to spot a bad watermelon from its tell-tale warning signs. Like, if it’s on the whitish side? Meh. But if it’s heading into an orange-yellow color, then you’re looking at one that probably had a good, lazy time sitting in the sun and ripening.
And then, there’s the webbing. You know, that spider-web looking brown scarring, that a number of melons have? This is surprisingly a good thing! Supposedly it means the bees have gone to town on the flower, thereby producing an over-abundance of pollination, which should theoretically yield some percentage sweetness. More webbing means more pollination, which equals more sweetness? I cannot explain the biology of it, but it seems to work.
Also, and this one always trips people out: watermelons are “boy” or “girl.” Yes, and I know, it sounds like grocery store astrology, but the rounder ones (the “girls”) are said to taste sweeter and the oblong ones (the “boys”) are likely to be more watery. I don’t know if it’s been peer-reviewed or any of that fun stuff, but I’ve had enough old-timers swear by it that I’m not going to dismiss it.
Oh—and this one’s actually useful if you’re looking for a watermelon: look at the stem, or what is left of it. If it’s still green, it probably had to come off too soon. The brown and dried-up tails have had ample time to ripen properly before coming off the vine—those are the ones you want. Not the largest one. Not the shiniest. It just has to be the right size, with the right spot, and that dried little tail.