Stay cool this summer with winter melon? | The Woks of Life

And there are people saying that if you cook this right it tastes like better than me. So today I'm going to make a braised winter melon. Winter melon is somewhat plain tasting but it has it does have a nice crunchy texture. This dish has always been in the back of my mind for the longest time and this time during our trip into China I had a taste of it again and I was like wow okay I need to block this. So here it is first thing uh since I came back first dish is going to be braised winter melon. Hopefully I didn't disappoint anybody. So how to pick a winter melon is that first of all it has to look the winter melon has to look very very firm okay. Once it's soft that means it starts its decay process. So it's very important that everything looks uh it's white flush it shouldn't have any discoloring and the outside should be very very firm. It does have this like frosting coating which is fine all you have to do we're gonna we're gonna basically take off the the outside layer so don't worry about that and then once we process it we wash it clean. Okay so we're gonna get right to it. For the inside just like any other melons uh you kind of want it to like you know um honeydew and cantaloupe you want to scrape this off just a little bit you know they're fine you don't need to clean it 100 percent but as you can see this piece of winter melon is a little bit on a tough side you're gonna see this thick layer of like a different kind of coloring so this is actually very very tough we kind of wanted to uh get rid of that and also you see this little string here that also shows the toughness. During the uh that when we're taking off the outside layer we're going to try to cut that off as well because otherwise it affects the texture. So this is what we're gonna do just gonna go like the outer layer okay or if you want you can cut it into sections so this way they're easier to process okay we can do it like this way so this actually you can see inside that little that that little layer is much less but here is much more so you we can cut off less follow the follow the curve of the winter melon so you don't waste too much like this it's nice that's done okay you do with the rest trim that away if you see any green parts you kind of want to get rid of it because you know why it's not that they're not edible they're just tough okay this piece the same so after i trim off the outer layer uh i washed the cutting board and i washed the pieces the large pieces now i'm gonna ready to cut into smaller chunks since we're braising it i actually wanted to have slightly bigger chunks and because it looks nice so this is what i'm doing about one inch to one and a half inch size and then this side i'm gonna do about one inch large chunks okay okay this now we're ready to cook hey everyone it's caitlin okay so now that my mom has showed you how to process the winter melon from here on out it's really easy heat some oil in a wok over medium heat add all of the winter melon pieces into the wok and lightly brown them on both sides this will take about three minutes per side next add the garlic ginger and the white parts of the scallion let them sizzle in the oil for about one minute or until fragrant next add the oyster sauce dark soy sauce and white pepper use your wok spatula to stir everything well next add the water and star anise if you're using it some people don't like the of star anise so you can easily omit it this is a little trick that i actually wanted to share is that this dish looks like before the braising process since you see the color before you add the water because if the color is ideal to you that's what the dish is going to look like when it's done cover and simmer for 10 to 12 minutes or until the winter melon is fork tender after 10 to 12 minutes if you're still finding there's too much liquid turn up the heat and stir for a couple of minutes to reduce and thicken the sauce now's the time to give it a taste and add a little bit more salt if needed last toss in the green parts of the scallion and serve in spite of its name winter melon is actually plentiful in late summer and fall you can get a head start this year with this great little recipe for easy braised winter melon this is a great easy side dish when winter melon is plentiful and it's also pretty inexpensive too we hope you all like this one and get the full recipe over at thewalksoflife.com if you enjoyed this video give us a like and subscribe for more