Fermented Cantaloupe Recipe

fermented cantaloupe pieces on a spoon, taken from a jar below.

Food For Life Garden

As you can see, cantaloupe is loaded with good-for-you properties. And so is fermenting. So let's put both together and make delicious fermented cantaloupe.

5 from 2 votes

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Prep Time 20

fermenting time 21

Total Time 21 20

Course Appetizer, Condiment, Fermented Food, Food Preservation, Side Dish, Snack, Tonic

Servings 1 quart

Equipment

A quart size mason jar
Fermentation weight - To keep the ingredients submerged in the brine and avoid floaters.
Fermentation Lid - Or regular mason jar lid. To keep oxygen and bacteria out and vent the gasses inside.
Chopping board and knife
Pickle packer (optional but very helpful) – Optional.
Scale - Optional. To measure the salt ratio.
Wide mouth funnel - Optional

Ingredients

Cantaloupe - Organic if possible.
1½ tbsp Sea salt - Avoid additives. Table salt and even some brands of sea salt and kosher salt can contain additives.
Filtered water - If necessary.
2 tsp Spices - Optional - Pumpkin pie spice mix, about two teaspoons per quart. Or fresh ginger, a cinnamon stick, a pinch of cardamom, or cloves.
handfull Basil - Optional - Basil pairs well with cantaloupe.
1 Cayenne pepper - Optional

Instructions

Prepare the Melon

First, wash your melon. Then cut the melon in half and remove the guts. Be sure to save the pulp and seeds. Three reasons: A) seeds for planting next year B) seeds for roasting, and C) to put all scraps in a jar and ferment into vinegar.
Slice the melon, remove the skin.
Save the skins too. They go into the vinegar making jar. This works best with unsprayed melons. If you have only conventional store bought melons, you can try to scrub them and hopefully it will work just fine. '
Cut the flesh into chunks and place them into a zeroed out bowl on your scale. (Put the bowl on the scale and turn it on so it reads 0 with the bowl on the scale.

Salt The Melon

Weigh your melon on a scale using the grams setting. Calculate 2% of that weight for your salt ratio. If you have 500 grams, 2% is 10 grams of salt. Alternatively add 2 tablespoons per quart jar. Mix it all well and let it sit for 10 minutes or so to start drawing juices.

Fill your jar

If you're using spices, it's best to add them first to keep them from floating up. I often forget and add them later. So far no problem.
Pack the pieces into your mason jar. I like to use a pickle packer to pack everything well. The jar should be near full, to about an inch below the rim. This will compress a bit more once you add your weight.
If you don't have plenty of brine to cover your cantaloupe pieces, after packing them down, add a little water. It will change the salt ratio slightly, but not enough to hurt anything.

Weigh down your Ingredients

Place a glass fermentation weight on your ingredients. If you don't have one, you can use a boiled, clean rock, a baggie filled with marbles or brine, or some other food-save, non-corrosive item you have on hand.

Cover your jar

If you are using a mason jar, I highly recommend a fermentation lid or airlock. They are self venting and are so easy to use. No maintenance necessary. If you don't have one, you can use a 2-piece mason jar lid. However, you'll need to remember to burp the jar once a day.
Or you can try to screw the band on loose, so it can self vent. Without a fermentation lid, be sure to keep an eye on the fermentation to see if a yeast layer forms on top, which is harmless, but should be skimmed off or it can give your fermentation an off-flavor.

Fermentation

Place your jar our of direct light with a bowl or plate under it, at about 70-85 ℉. This temperature should be maintained over the course of the next 3 weeks. Some fluctuation is fine, but avoid prolonged lower or higher temperatures. For more details on fermenting and why this is important, visit my lacto-fermented vegetables page, a beginner course on fermenting.

Check Your Fermentation

After 2-3 days, your fermentation should start to look active. You should see bubbles forming, maybe a bit of overflow, and a cloudy brine.
If you are impatient, you can smell and taste them now and use them if you like a very light fermentation, but if it doesn't taste tangy yet, leave it to ferment a bit longer.
For a full fermentation, leave it alone for 3 weeks. The melon pieces will get more acidic and have increased probiotic activity. That means more beneficial probiotics for your gut. However, if your ambient temperature is very high, you might want to cut that a little short to prevent the cantaloupe from turning soft.
After 3 weeks, it should go into cold storage, but before you put your jar away, open it and smell the melon. It should have a pleasant tangy scent. Now taste a piece. If they are nicely tangy and firm and you like them that way, you can take out the glass weight, place a sealing lid on the jar and refrigerate or cellar them.
Fermenting them for three weeks for a full fermentation yields the highest health benefits.

Notes

How To Tell If Fermented Melon Is Safe To Eat

Fermenting is very safe, but as with anything, there is a chance that something might go wrong. If for some reason your ferment has mold on it, smells putrid or seems slimy or mushy, you don't want to taste it. Something went awry. But it will still make great food for your compost. If it looks, feels, and smells good, it's fine to taste and eat. You'll know if it's bad.

It's very unlikely that anything will go wrong if you followed the instructions and used clean equipment. But when you're dealing with food, stuff can happen. Maybe your room temperature was too low or too high or your melon or other ingredients had been treated with pesticides. There might have been mold or undesirable bacteria on your food that multiplied before your fermentation could get strong enough to combat it. It's always a bummer, but remember, while it can happen, it is not the norm. Don't be discouraged and do try again.

Storage

Replace your fermentation lid with a sealing lid and place the jar into the refrigerator or your root cellar. Keep it somewhere where it's fairly cool, or it will keep fermenting actively and eventually turn soft and not very appetizing. And after several months of active fermentation at warm temperatures, your melon can indeed become inedible. Fermentation is actually the breaking down of food, and while it's great for us at first, once the sugars are replete and the microbes run out of food, they will die and so will the food.

So if you don't plan to eat your fermented melons soon, it's best to keep them cool, under 60 degrees. This way your melon should be good to use for at least a year or more. Use as needed.

How to Use Fermented Melons

Use them as you would any pickled foods. They can be added to sandwiches, salads, or served as a side by themselves.

Fermented foods, when served with your meals, will help with the digestion of foods that are harder for your body to break down, such as cooked meats.

You can use the brine as a starter for a new batch of fermented vegetables. It is great too for fermenting cooked vegetables or other foods. For example you could use it as a starter to ferment eggs. Because boiled eggs don't have any live lactobacilli on them, they will need some help from a starter culture.

As always, when you introduce a new food to your diet, be sure to start slow. Let your body adjust to fermented foods over a few weeks before you increase the quantity. Watch for allergic reactions. And check with your health provider, if you are pregnant, nursing or are taking medication.

Enjoy your Delicious Fermented Melon!

As you can see, fermenting foods is such a perfect way to preserve them. Not only do you get the benefits of the fresh melons, preserved at their vine-ripened best, but fermenting increases the nutrients and their impact in our body and it adds probiotics. The melon will stay nice and firm for a year in the fridge or cellar and will be a great treat for you while waiting for next year's harvest. Give your gut a healthy dose of probiotics, and it will support a healthy digestion and better health over all.

Keyword fermented foods, condiments, relish, lacto-fermented foods, preserving, pickled foods, savory toppings, fermented vegetables, probiotics