Cantaloupe melons are at the top of the summer refreshment list. But how do you pick a good one? There’s a cantaloupe-picking ritual! How to pick a good cantaloupe and other cantaloupe wisdom are all found here!
In this post: How to pick a good cantaloupe, how to tell if a cantaloupe is ripe, storing and freezing cantaloupe, serving ideas, and … why the name cantaloupe? But first things first!
Cantaloupe Season
It’s a lot easier to pick a good juicy cantaloupe during peak season, but when is true cantaloupe season? Cantaloupe is a summertime melon generally harvested June through October, and in peak season July through September — just at the right time to cool us off during the hottest part of summer.
How to Pick a Cantaloupe
I learned all about cantaloupe selecting through my parents, grandparents, aunts …
Use this little ritual to pick a good cantaloupe:
- Pick it up. It should be heavy for its size.
- Tap it. It should sound hollow and dense.
- Look at it. You’re looking for a highly pronounced outer “basket,” aka reticulation (for North American cantaloupes).
- Smell it. It should have an intense sweet fragrance. No fragrance? No can eat! Pick it up, and if it’s not fragrant, it’s not as ripe as it could be. Which means less tasty.
How to Tell if a Cantaloupe is Ripe
If the fragrance hits you when you enter the room, you know your cantaloupe is ripe and ready to eat. If not, pick it up and smell for a fragrance up close. If your cantaloupe is fragrance-free, it’s not ripe.
Another indication of ripeness is if the end opposite the stem, the blossom end, gives when you press it.
Yes, cantaloupes continue to ripen off the vine, and if it isn’t quite ripe yet, you can ripen your cantaloupe by leaving it at room temperature. It could take a few days, but it’s worth the wait.
Too Ripe? A Cantaloupe Frappé, aka smoothie, is the perfect solution to an over-ripe cantaloupe.
How to Store Cantaloupe
- Let the cantaloupe ripen out of the fridge at room temperature until fully ripe. (Note, this can take a few days.)
- Once ripe, store cantaloupe in the fridge. For the most flavor, bring to room temperature before serving.
A whole ripe cantaloupe can generally last in the fridge for 7-10 days.
Check out also how to cut a cantaloupe, including storage times for cut cantaloupe.
Freezing Cantaloupe
Can you freeze cantaloupe? Yes. That’s what we do for our Cantaloupe Frappé, aka smoothie.
Cantaloupe freezes well and is convenient. However the texture may change a little. To keep the cantaloupe at its best, follow the tips below.
Tips on How to Freeze Cantaloupe
- Tip – Choose ripe yet firm melons to freeze.
- Tip – You want to freeze them fast to keep ice crystals as small as possible, so they are in better shape when they thaw. To do this:
- Freeze the cantaloupe in small pieces. (See How to Cut a Cantaloupe for preparing it to freeze.)
- Freeze the cantaloupe pieces flat in one layer, giving space so that none of the pieces are touching each other. This also helps keep them from sticking together.
- Store in the coldest part of your freezer (ideally below the middle, in the rear away from the door).
- Tip – Cover with plastic wrap to keep the cantaloupe from absorbing odors from other foods.
- Tip – After frozen solid, to save space, you can stack or pile up the frozen cantaloupe in sealed freezer containers or freezer bags, leaving about half an inch (around 1.5 cm) of space between the closure and the melon.
- Freeze up to a month, for best quality.
Cantaloupe Nourishment
The orange color shouts out the high amount of vitamin A in cantaloupe. They’re also high in Vitamin C, quite rich in potassium, and contain a great deal of water (90%). Not many calories for all the tasty refreshing lusciousness!
Besides keeping us hydrated in the summer, a large wedge slice (1/8 of medium cantaloupe) has about a gram fiber. I don’t know about you, but I definitely eat at least two slices, which is roughly around 8% of the amount of fiber the USDA recommends for the day.
Cantaloupe Serving Ideas
Some of our favorite ways to eat a good cantaloupe are also the simplest. Try one or all of these this summer:
- Prosciutto Melon Skewers is an Italian classic made the perfect size for an appetizer.
- Cantaloupe Frappe, or you can call it a smoothie!
A Simple Way to Serve Cantaloupe
A common way to serve cantaloupe wedges in Italy is to leave the very last bit of the melon attached to the wedge’s rind so that the pulp doesn’t slide off. (Like in the photo below, except for the one I got distracted on.)
Then serve the cantaloupe wedges using their rind as a little plate, and enjoy with knife and fork.
Is a cantalope a fruit?
The short answer is: yes.
The long answer is: yes, a cantaloupe is a muskmelon, which is a gourd, which is a fruit. (Just like watermelons and cucumbers, and even though we think of them as vegetables, pumpkins and squashes too.)
There are 2 types of fruit in the world considered to be melons: musk melons and watermelons — plus all their varieties. (If you were wondering, the winter melon seems to more closely identify itself as a wax gourd.) Cantaloupe is a musk melon (cucumis melo), along with honeydew and many, many other varieties.
It’s also a berry, by the way — a “pepo.” In fact, what we call melon is short for it’s Latin name: melopepo. Hmm, melon berry? It’s another way to look at it!
Cantaloupe is a trailing vine of Cucurbitaceae ancestry. Other melons, pumpkins and zucchini (courgettes), to name a few, are all in the family. Their family crest, if they had one, would probably embody the head honcho of the family, a round-shaped cucumber.
Where do cantaloupes come from?
Both watermelons and muskmelons hail from Africa and the Middle East, where they have been cultivated for thousands of years. Very small ones still grow wild. Melons growing in arid desert conditions make sense. Like with succulent cactus, all that water held inside makes it fairly drought resistant. And melon is definitely a succulent fruit!
From Northern Africa, and likely farther east, they crossed the Mediterranean sea. The earliest identified remains of melon for Western Europe (dated Late Bronze Age 1200-1150BC) were found in 2008 in a well of an ancient Nuragic settlement on the coast of Sardinia, an Italian island in the Mediterranean between Africa and Western Europe.
From there, it made it’s way to the mainland. The cantaloupe melon was known in the Italian region of Campania since at least the 1st century AD, as well as in Spain, where they were brought by the Moors. They were small, and less sweet — not yet the luscious orange colored fruit we know today.
Cantalupo is a Place in Italy
During the European Renaissance, monks grew cantaloupe (simply called melone in Italy) for the Pope’s summer residence in Cantalupo, north of Rome.
Some suggest the name cantalupo comes from the common howling heard in the melon fields from the area’s then-large population of wolves.
Canta is the Italian word for sing, and lupo for wolf.
Cantalupo in Sabina is still on the map, in the Lazio region (ancient Latium — heart of the Roman Empire and the Latin language) on the western Mediterranean coast of Italy.
From Italy, cantaloupes made their way up to southeast France, where the quality of melons grown in Cavaillon in the Provence region (near Avignon, again a Papal residence) became and remains famous. And in the 16th century, Spanish colonists brought one of the world’s most refreshing summer fruits to the Americas.
Cantaloupe G-astronomy
While really more into gastronomy than astronomy, I couldn’t help notice this cantaloupe, photographed towards the end of July, matched the almost-full summer moon! Apparently, that would make this a “waxing gibbous” cantaloupe. (I’ll definitely forgive you if you don’t happen to see my g+astronomy “humor” here!)
