Tips

10 Ways to Stir-Fry Bitter Melon to Avoid Its Darkening: Master Chef’s Secret Step to Keep Bitter Melon Fresh and Blemish-Free

Suffering from dark spots on your squash? Wondering how to deal with this issue?

6 February, 2024

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Watermelon is a popular fruit in the summer. It has a sweet taste, a mild nature, good cooling properties, and is very nutritious.

Watermelon fruit can be made into many delicious and attractive dishes. Among them, stir-fried watermelon is a very popular dish. Watermelon can also be stir-fried with various ingredients such as bean sprouts, onions, pork, chicken, beef, poultry offal, etc.

However, no matter how you stir-fry the watermelon, it is prone to the phenomenon of turning black, which looks unappealing. Chefs explain that when stir-frying watermelon, do not put the watermelon directly into the pan. Another step is to be taken to keep the watermelon green, not turning black and to have less water loss.

So which step is it? Let’s refer to the stir-frying method below:

Preparing to stir-fry watermelon

1 watermelon, 5 cloves of garlic, spring onions, salt, sugar, and bouillon powder.

How to stir-fry watermelon

The first step is to peel the watermelon. Many people usually peel it directly with a knife, but with young and tender watermelons, you just need to scrape off the outer peel, and the watermelon will retain its beautiful green color.

After peeling, wash the watermelon thoroughly. Cut the watermelon into bite-sized pieces, shaping it according to your preference. Note that once the watermelon is cut, it needs to be stir-fried immediately, as leaving it for too long will cause it to turn black and lose some of its nutritional value.

Peel the garlic, crush it or finely chop it. If you don’t like the taste of garlic, you can replace it with dried onions. Rinse the spring onions, cut them into sections.

At this point, many people would put the garlic or dried onions in the pan and sauté them in cooking oil before adding the watermelon to stir-fry. However, according to chefs, putting the watermelon directly into the pan to stir-fry will easily result in the watermelon turning black. Therefore, you should blanch the watermelon first before stir-frying.

Blanching the watermelon is very simple and needs to be done quickly. Boil a pot of water, add a little salt and cooking oil, then add the watermelon and stir-fry for about 15 seconds, then immediately scoop it out. Adding salt and cooking oil to the water helps the watermelon retain its beautiful green color, enhances the flavor, and creates a thin layer of oil on the surface of the watermelon, helping to reduce the amount of water released during stir-frying.

At this point, start stir-frying the watermelon. Add a little oil to a non-stick pan, add the garlic or dried onions and sauté until fragrant, then add the blanched watermelon and stir-fry over medium heat.

Stir-fry until the watermelon is cooked through, the white core turns translucent, then immediately add salt, bouillon powder to taste, and the cut spring onions. Stir for a moment, then turn off the heat.

Transfer the stir-fried watermelon to a dish and enjoy.

According to Sài Gòn Thể Thao