You’re Forgetting to Do This One Thing When Buying Watermelon

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There are few foods that scream “summer!” louder than a slice of juicy watermelon. However, there’s a surprising secret for how to tell if a watermelon is ripe.  Next time you head to the market on the hunt for the very best melon, don’t grab the first one you find. To take home the sweetest one in the whole heap, use our easy trick.

How to find the perfect watermelon

It seems like everyone has a rule of thumb for finding the best watermelon—a butter-colored “belly,” a dull skin, plenty of brown scars and so on. But regardless of your method, we’d like to recommend doing this experiment, too.

Pick up a watermelon. It should be surprisingly heavy for its size, whether it’s large or small!

The idea is that watermelons are 92 percent water, so a heavier watermelon should be juicy, sweet and ready to eat. But—don’t stop at the first melon. You’ll want to pick up one or two more melons and see whether those are heavy, too. Be sure to take home the heaviest of the bunch.

How to tell if a watermelon is ripe

You can do the weight test along with other melon methods. Next time you’re at the market or grocery store, look out for these tell-tale signs of a ripe watermelon:

1. A dark green rind
2. A golden yellow spot on the melon’s underside
3. A deep, hollow sound when thumped
4. Brown spots, webbing or scarring
5. Heavy for its size

Then, bring home a beauty! When it is time to dig in, use this technique for carving a watermelon perfectly the easy way.