CITRON MELON - A Fascinating Cousin to the Watermelon (Makataan Konfyt)
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- Опубликовано: 23 авг 2024
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Episode 644: Citron Melon
Species: Citrullus lanatus var. citroides
Location: NYC, USA
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Check out these videos on the strangely similar fig leaf melon:
Fig leaf melon review: ruclips.net/video/r0KyVPZ9vgw/видео.html
fig leaf melon candy: ruclips.net/video/BoesEdqaDbI/видео.html
Mysterious white melons in Costa Rica: ruclips.net/video/uWPlR1gFspI/видео.html
You buy a watermelon.🙂
It's got a pretty decent size.😲
You're excited to eat it.🤤
You cut it open.😀
It looks like this😄......
It looks like this😢
It is a invasive weed in western australia.
What can we do to get a few seeds from you? Especially from your top ten favorite fruits. Dibs on the first set of seeds if you do! Mitakuye Oyasin 💖 Walk in Beauty dear! 💖
That's Sylvester and Tweety! Great vid though! 👍
Konfyt more or less means jam and rhymes with fight, not feet ;)
I used to deer hunt in Troy, Alabama. A few hunting spots were old farm homesteads where the dwellings had rotted down and the crops had become naturalized. There were several fields of naturalized citron melons.
Back in the day, the farmers would make pickles and glacéed fruit out of them. Most of these melons were sold to manufacturing plants to candy. The glacéed citron meat was especially popular at Christmas due to the burgeoning fruit cake industry.
What I found interesting was the deer. They'd take their hooves and hammer out a hole in the melons. Then, they'd eat all of the pulp and leave the seeds inside the hollow shell. It was neat watching the herd eating these slightly sour melons.
In Australia, it's commonly called a jam melon. It typically used to bulk out the fruit ingredient of jams (jelly) recipes. Normally for more expensive ingredients like fresh berries (very costly here). Not usually used in large commercial situations, but fairly common for things like large cattle stations where they can grow the melons as a "treat" for the animals, & being able to reduce their cost to make home made jam/jelly (jello).
That's pretty interesting! I bet I'd like that in jam. Also, I have seen cows eating watermelons, and they are so stoked the whole time, haha.
Its so odd to think berries are expensive in other countries. Even here in California you can walk around and find wild blackberries and more in many places, buying certain berries might be a bit costly. Do they just not grow well in Australia?
@@jacobq.2204 99% of all berries are grown for jam (jelly) market. A single 150g punnet (roughly 1/4 lb) will set you back $5-6. Some Blackberry varieties in some areas are considered weeds, we don't have much farm land suitable for other bramble crops, also pest pressure here is massive. Thus very expensive. We have native brambles here, but they will not produce amounts considered economic.
@@Kristenhas3cats Here they sometimes call it fodder melon, not common, but considered mainly for animals, normally only used for humans when ingredients need bulking. Have seen recipes as the ONLY fruit ingredient, but not considered "good" by most.
Cool! And thank you for translating to American...
I am from Greece and my grandma used to make watermelon rind preserve the exact same way . It is so interesting to see that all through out the world some pieces of food and culture interlink.
You can just use “pickling lime” for soaking the citron which is available in the canning section of most supermarkets
You're correct about the lime solution - what it does is stabilize the cell walls of the plant, preventing osmosis (from a sugar or salt solution) from deflating the cells quite so much. It's a common ingredient in pickles and candied things of all kinds.
There's a wonderful dessert made almost the same way as this, but using very strong flavored orange fleshed pumpkins. If you ever come across it, definitely eat some.
This is my favorite channel on RUclips. I travel all over the world and now try to seek out the strange fruit I see on this awesome channel.
So, as someone that works with winter melons a lot, you'll have a much easier time if you use a hatchet or a machete instead of that kitchen knife for the slicing part. Also those things with the spikes are occasionally sold as implements for making chicken-fried steak or cantonese style roast pork belly, so if you do decide to invest in one, they have a variety of handy uses besides confectionery and threatening children.
Hey, wife! Congrats! I missed y'all getting hitched, after the iceland thing :) I'm with her, coffee in the evening is where it's at. This looks super interesting, I've never once in my life considered a sweet pickle. Well. Not like a sweet cucumber pickle or whatever, but like- anyways, with the cinnamon and ginger, I bet this is real tasty. Neat!
Ahh did you get married?! I knew you had got engaged but may have missed a marriage update. Congratulations to you and the lucky lady!
I wonder if the lime helps breakdown the fiber and make it a lot more digestible, but I might be wrong. I do know that I've used that particular "white powder" to making corn tortillas at home, and I'm told it's because corn on its own isn't easily broken down and almost no nutrients can be absorbed from it without treating the corn first.
Yes, without the ancient American nixtamalization process, corn does not provide any available niacin (vitamin B3). The lime unbinds the niacin and makes it available in a form the body can digest. Without this process, a diet heavy in corn leads to a horrible niacin deficiency known as pellagra. While the American natives didn't know all that, they knew that experimented and figured out that soaking corn in ashes would soften the corn kernels tough outer covering, making it easier to cook and form into dough. They had no problem with pellagra. But American colonists (and Europeans who eventually grew the crop) kept having issues because they eschewed the nixtamalization process and eventually used mechanical means to grind it up into flour. It was still a problem with non-native people highly dependent on corn up into the early 1900s.
It seems lime is added in the process of crystallization so that the fruit contains a firm structure.
Which makes sense, because many fruits get very soft and mushy when being cooked.
And since you don't want to end up with a jam but candied pieces of fruit...
We do a similar process with an Indian gourd, except we put the liberally impaled gourd prices under heavy stones for a day to drain a lot of the moisture out before cooking it in syrup flavored with cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and bayleaf. It's called murobba.
i watched your golden berry video the other day, and man you've come a long way🤣 i've been watching for years but you really have made incremental steps over the years of fine tuning your videos while keeping your personality still in them. good job
I went to the pawpaw festival in Athens county Ohio and I bought two big pawpaw's. One was a wild variety and I can't remember what the other variety was but I just know it was a cross bred pawpaw. I had one free tiny one and the two big ones cost $15 because they were big ones. One of them was bigger than my hand. I'm planning on growing all the seeds. I might also give some seedlings away to some family who have houses rather than apartments unless their complex allows them to grow at least two trees. I also finally tried a cheramoya fruit from Meijers. I also plan to grow all the seeds if they are willing to grow. I have all my plant seeds wrapped in moist paper towels and sealed inside a Ziploc bag. I start a lot of different seedlings this way if they can't start after being dried, I start them right away.
I bought the jaguar chocolate you featured a few weeks back. It was good. I bought a few regular bars, as well from Madre. Great products!
You are definitely my favorite RUclips host!!! You never get political or preachy you are just interested in presenting fruit and that is so refreshing. Please keep up the great work!
My grand mother in Canada used to make candied Citron Melon. This was in the '50's when I was a young boy. At the time, it wasn't of much interest to me, but it is interesting seeing this now, which makes me wonder how common this was and how the recipe got to where she lived in Quebec.
These things ship really well. I think they keep for a long time too. I've never seen these in stores but it's interesting that she was able to get it back then at all.
My dad from Canada also said people made their own candied fruit for fruitcake with this . That the mysterious green candied fruit was made with this .
Did your grandfather serve in WW2? A lot of those stories seem to trace back to being stationed overseas and taking a tasty souvenir home
@@deathpyre42
No, but he was a ship's captain and sailed to quite a few places, so the scenario seems a valid one.
@@greenthumb6241 LOL..I had to laugh when I read this. I was trying to explain to my wife what candied Citron was like and the ingredient in fruitcake came to mind.
It's a small World.
Those are actually Sylvester and Tweety clips (I hate to be the guy to point out these stupid things but I couldn't resist the urge), as always love your videos man, keep it up
The truth matters!
In various parts of the south (Georgia, Arkansas, maybe Alabama) they pickle watermelon rind. A Generic dill seasoning, Kool-aid (cherry), or the watermelon pulp itself are the usual flavorings to add to the brine. If you've had pickled diakon in a Japanese or Korean wing place its very similar.
Oh is that where Chinese red melon seeds come from? I always thought those were dyed.
A good Chinese supermarket has those stabbing devices. It is used for stabbing pork belly skin to crisp it up when grilled. It would probably work well for this too or grab a few forks to make it more efficient.
Been a little bit since I've gotten to watch one of your videos! You're one of my favorite creators! Thanks for what you do!
Here in Argentina there is a fairly common and classical sweet that's prepared almost identically, but it's made with a pumpkin variety (zapallo angola); it is called "zapallo en almíbar".
Really nice.
My grandmother made watermelon rind pickles every summer this reminded me a lot of that. However she was of swedish descent so I'm not sure how she picked up the recipe except for the fact that they were farmers and they used everything. no waste
Idk why but your channel gives me 2006 vibes I love it.
I agree
You're just so friendly and agreeable :-) you're a gem
Thanks for posting. I am in central FL and citron melon grows wild here. I have probably 50 of them laying out in my pasture as I write this. I never tried to eat them - they are hard as rocks, as you discovered. Always wondered if there was any use for them, but the recipe you made is more than I want to attempt. I have been told that they are used as food for livestock in some parts of the world. Maybe that is how they came to be in this area, which is an agricultural area with lots of cattle. I started a worm bin this year and I have been giving the smaller ones to my worms, who seem to like them.
I am in Central Florida as well. There are several in my pasture. Glad I saw this video to see what can be made. It is a long process though to make preserves or ca died fruit.
At the museum near my there's an old still life with one of these. I'd always thought it was a fantasy item the artist included. Now I will make sure my nibling knows that this is something real that they could try someday.
Kew Gardens now have this as a distinct species _Citrullus amarus_ according to their website Plants of the World Online. That species was described in 1836 and the specific name means bitter. Obviously, specific names do not always describe all the varieties of that species once more varieties are found.
There's a candy exactly like this from India, that they commonly sell in Indian supermarkets. It's made out of winter squash, pretty much the same way with the calcium powder, except, I don't think you have to let it sit for three days. But it has the exact same texture. It's commonly flavored with an essence from a flower that's commonly used in perfumes and colognes, so it can have kind of a weird taste, that takes some getting used to. I just bought some a week ago, but I threw away the box after I finished it, and I can't remember the name of it right now, for the life of me. I'm trying to look it up and I can't even find it online now, because I'm getting the name wrong, but I just looked up recipes for it a few days ago. I had no idea that edible lime was a thing. I'm wondering if it's safe to eat it if you have a history of calcium kidney stones. I also heard that alum is bad for you too, for some reason, but I can't remember why. I'm pretty sure they sell the lime powder at the Indian store and I was wondering what they use it for. It was in the aisle with all the bagged spices.
I think the candy you’re talking about might be called Petha. That’s made from a melon/ squash and it has a really interesting texture. It’s super sweet but nice in small quantities.
@@Jollymadhatter Yeah, it is petha. I just couldn't remember that for the life of me when I was writing that comment.
That dried fruit is more popular in Mexico than before because it's a substitute for "acitrón", another candy made of a crystallized cactus, that cactus is endangered now so substitutes became popular for the "rosca de reyes" a giant sweet bread consumed the first week of the New Year in Mexico.
Of course most kids don't like it, as it should be haha
As a South African, you really should try that on a cracker with some cheese. I'd pair it with something blue or a good camembert
I am a chemistry teacher BUT do follow the recipe)
Lime and alum share the hydroxide ion so I can see the substitution.
Baking soda does make the solution alkaline which lime also does so if you only need an alkaline solution you can probably use baking soda as well.
Using alum definitely wouldn't be a good idea though, because it's toxic in large amounts. And baking soda isn't as alkaline as lime, so it won't have as strong of an effect. Maybe it'd also be possible to use lye?
@@FreeFireFull well you do wash it afterwards.
Why not use it at home? Calcium Hydroxide ( pickling lime ) has been used for a few hundred years as a preservative to make, well...pickles. What makes the common crisp cucumber pickles we enjoy at home is the same thing that made Jared's Makutan Candy translucent and crisp.
@@ladydriver0_0 it is the substitutions I suggest I wouldnt use. I have edited the comment to follow the recipe.
@@NitronNeutron ah, okay. It makes sense now, thanks!
Even though you're "not a cooking channel", I still come here first when looking for a way to make a certain dish.
For the torture device, you can also use some hand guards for mandolin slicers and they often have lots of long spikes. some are more like cleated plastic on the other hand which don's't seem great for either this or for their original purpose(though IDK for sure on the later.
Regarding the last part of the video, the connection is most probably the Portuguese, who have colonized Angola and the cape during the 1500s, and had of course a lot of contacts with Spain and their colonies. Candying melons seems to be a very widespread practice from india to china to whole the americas ( i wouldn't know if they picked it up from arab contact or india directly, maybe both) but it's not really about the fruit as much as the sugar(cane), which wasn't easily available for a long time, until the intensive plantations in the carabbean.
Love the Tom and Jerry clips. I haven't seen your videos in so long. Glad to finally get a notification. Your channel has grown so much. Seems like I've been watching since before 20K subscribers and before a WIFE...congratulations on every awesome thing 🎉 👏🏾
That wasn't even Tom and Jerry you clout chaser lmao
@@jaguarmartin lmao
I didnt know you were married. Always pictured you as a the lone world traveler 😆
He got engaged during the bananas in Iceland episode
It also has something in common with cucumber. It's also similar as Wax Gourd fruit (Kundol) when you candied it.
Hat for my pets? Sold!! I guess I'll find a use for the coffee as well as the hats.
Good job Jared! You went the extra mile. ..I always appreciate your style and integrity!
I would blend this iced coffee with milk and ice to make a frappuccino
Also, look into pickled watermelon rind. MUCH better snack than the candied and really tasty. This looks like it would work well.
I've got an episode on it filmed, haven't posted yet though. it's good stuff
In South Africa we use Ginger and we poke holes in it with a fork and small use a bit of lemon when the ginger and sugar syrup
Interesting! It looks like a wild melon I came across in south Texas. Nice! Did anyone (i search to see but too many comments) say it was Sylvester and Tweety , lol, and not Tom and Jerry in the clip. hehe. It seems like when I was a kid everyone always said do not eat the seeds... so I didn't. They said it would make you sick.... What do "they " know? hah!
I remember my grandmother making a sweet watermelon rind pickle, with cinnamon and (I think) also cloves. No pink, only the whitish greenish part. I think she must have used white vinegar and alum as well as lots of sugar. I have also used this normally discarded part fresh, like jicama, in a salad, and it works great!
Your effort definitely wasn't wasted! Really enjoyed seeing the process and the results. Thanks, as always.
As a follow up to the expansion of my tropical greenhouse plans you are singularly responsible for ;) ... I told my partner about the seed Patrion level ... he quickly exited the room before I could ask for monies to join .... but I am pretty sure it will happen eventually...
You can dry the seeds, salt them and dry them again and then roast them. You can eat them with the shells. They're awesome
So cool, I even tried a tomatillo and it tasted good and I ate it raw
Raw tomatillos are amazing but its hard to eat more than one. Very overpowering
Wow this looks almost like the Hydromelon in Legend of Zelda.
Wiiiife?? 👀👀❤
yep! got married last month 💍
@@WeirdExplorer Congratulations
@@WeirdExplorer congrats!
@@WeirdExplorer oh!! Congratulations, I am so excited for you both. I’ve been watching your channel for years now, what an exciting milestone. Best of wishes
@@WeirdExplorer God bless you both!
Fiancee is wife! I missed that. Congrats!
I had a good laugh at the seed thing. Well played lol
We,in India have a similar sweet called petha made from white pumpkin .The process is similar, pickling in lime or alum and then in sugar solution - eaten as dry pieces . Once upon a time we were all connected
Yes indeed! 👍 Nice to know. 🙂
This is so fascinating. You’re always surprising and spoiling us with fruity curiosities.
I've been watching 👀 you on and off and I enjoyed your videos...oh wow those fruits really keep you young..you haven't aged a bit lol..nuff love
so love your chaise lounge!! if i had space that is exactly what i would choose maby green depending room colours
Alum was used to treat cuts when shaving. It would cause the cut to shrink and reduce bleeding
You're getting seeds on patreon!? That's a quality offer 👌
Thx for the new weird one 😊 did you ever tried water caltrops (bat nut). Would be a nice one on your channel!
Greetings from Germany
Thanks brother, in the Toronto area we have a store called Nations that carry those melons sometimes. I was curious what those were about.
Strange that the seeds are red. Awesome that you took the time to prepare it! It looks really cool when translucent with the red seeds showing!
Very interesting. I never heard of this fruit. Thank you for this video.
As someone who likes the watermelon rind more than the regular watermelon flesh, this seems like a perfect match for me.
I'd personally consider it the same species, but a different variety. They can freely interbreed and produce completely viable seed. They even grow wild in citrus groves all over the US. Most likely the wild ones are just feral watermelons. Yet more circumstantial evidence that they're the same exact species.
The Mrs. Wages company sells pickling lime (calcium hydroxide). You can get it on line, or from stores that sell pickling supplies.
Neat, the word for lime that you mix with corn to smash it comes from the PIE word for slime. The word for the lime that you put on corn chips that is a fruit comes from Persian Limon.
In Lebanon we do the same thing to pumpkin to make jam.
so it's like pickle but you soak it in limewater (alkaline) instead of vinegar (acid)?
Would love to have a few of the seeds for propagation
We eat it with Cheese most commonly in South Africa 🧀
This reminded me that my grandparents used to grow watermelons that were yellow. I guess it was just a different variety of watermelon, but sadly I've never seen it in stores. They were mostly white on the outside and the taste was slightly different.
Reading all these comments where people say "that's just like a thing we have here" makes me wonder just how many sugar delivery systems humans have invented before just making straight up hard candy.
By the way I think there's still another cactus fruit you need to try. Grows on blue candle cactus nicknamed a billberry cactus. I think it might grow in either Mexico or parts of South America.
The regular watermelon rind, we do it a lot in my country. We make almost every year, it's a really nice sweet dessert.
In the South of Brazil, the citron melon has become an invasive species in some beach's dunes. It is not harmful, however, as it does just coexist with the local flora and is kida rare to find. For my luck, I happen to bought a small farm right in an area where it occurs in the wild here.
But I don't make sweets with them, I use them for savory recipes like garlic soups and stir-fries with other vegetables. I also grow shark fin squash, but I use the two fruits in different recipes: squash goes best with meat. (I don't really like sweets...) Also, myanimals just love them - my pet pig, chicken, rabbits, even the dogs!
Around here, farmers don't like the citron watermelon because it hybridizes very easily with the common watermelon, and the hybrids are usually born with white flesh and very little flavor, not being useful for saling.
I was very surprised to see one on your channel. :)
Non-native species are called "invasive" when they are harmful to native species and spread rapidly. Non-native species that spread slowly and grow peacefully with native species in the wild are called "naturalized".
Ah! That’s where those red seeds comes from. My mom always gets these red “sunflower” seeds from the Asian market but they’re so hard to eat and thin like a watermelon.
Wow never been to one of your videos this early!
The seed option for your patreon has got me on the fence. That is nice info to know, thanks.
Hi sir, have you ever tasted Muntingia Calabura. In my place it is called Kersen fruit. It tastes sweet and is usually eaten by children playing under the tree.
Yes, search my channel for strawberry tree fruit. or check the archive here www.weirdexplorer.com
Thank you, I loved this episode!!
You need to try the “art combes ancient watermelon” it’s the best watermelon I’ve ever grown, it has red seeds, and it also has a neck like a gourd
Congratulations on getting married!💕
You got me into weird fruits!
Hey there, do you happen to know if the cherries of a Himalayan red cherry birch are edible? I have been looking for over a year & have found absolutely no information.
Really enjoy your channel. I would love to try snake fruit.
I wonder if you can make a buffalo melon (gourd) more palatable with this technique.
You can also preserve eggs in the shell with lime.
Hey as I check the correct name for this fruit should be Citrullus lanatus var. caffrorum (Alef.) Fosberg if we consider it as a subspecies or Citrullus caffer Schrad. if we consider it as separate species; name which you used - Citrullus lanatus var. citroides (L. H. Bailey) Mansf. isn't consisted with taxonomy rules (it is sometimes used tho) whole explenation you can found in article „Toward consistency of taxonomic rank in wild/domesticated Cucurbitaceae” by G.L. Nesom published in Phytoneuron (2011) on pages 4-6
really love your videos cause im livin in a country where exotic fruits are rare..
It's more like nothing than rare🤧
So this is the Citron fruit that we see during the holidays that goes into fruit cake and cookies? I just bought some for the first time over the holidays and it was white, but I had no idea what the fruit looked like.
14:53 I mean konfyt/confit just means candied. I'm pretty sure that as soon as people got sugar and figured out the process of candying they tried it on pretty any fruit that they could.
Alum is an active ingredient in baking powder.
My grandpa used to make watermelon rind preserve.
“I did not kill all the fruit baby’s, only half” 😂😂😂😂😂
Citron melon. Sounds so technologically advanced lol.
Thank you for this video! 😀🌺
I don't know how to feel about frozen coffee pucks. Better than instant?
I genuinely eat all but the greenest bits of watermelon anyway so I'm open to eating a watermelon that's just white.
We have an Indian sweet made with ash gourd that's essentially confit in lime (sunnambu) and sugar syrup too so that's probably be good with this too.
Baked baking soda is about as good as lime, but Alum is better than both.
We made the ash gourd version at home once when we got 4 kilos of ash gourd as a 'gift'... Consensus was 'good, but never again, not while Haldiram has entire factories making these'.
Watermelon seeds are edible raw, are these too?
I wonder if you could make something similar to that confit with green squash or zucchini
Maybe! it might be too soft.
wife! congratulation
"I didnt kill all the fruit babies, I only killed half of them"
Perfectly balanced... as all things should be