How to make delicious candied melon at home?

Cooking candied melon at home is as simple as frying potatoes or boiling borsch. The time spent is fully justified, because such a product does not contain harmful dyes and preservatives. Candied candied fruit can be used as a filling or decoration for confectionery.

How to choose a melon for candied fruit?

For the preparation of candied fruit in production, melons are used in the stage of technical ripeness, when their flesh is still hard, which means it retains its shape well. It is difficult to find such fruits in the market or in the store. Melons that are fully ripe come on sale - their flesh is very soft and tender, during the process of cooking it turns into mashed potatoes.

However, in some varieties of melons (such as Kassaba, Alushta, Basvaldi, Ethiopka, Altai, Cantaloupe and others), a layer of dense pulp is preserved during ripening. It is located near the crust, has a thickness of about 1 cm and is considered conditionally inedible. It is he who is ideal for making candied fruits at home.

Melon preparation

If the melon is in the stage of technical ripeness, you should:

1. Wash it, cut it in half and scoop out the seeds with a spoon.
2. Remove the peel (this is convenient to do with a peeler, but you can also use an ordinary knife).
3. Cut the pulp into pieces of the same size. Their recommended thickness is 1 cm. The length can be any, but it is desirable that the slices do not differ much from each other, since the preparation time depends on their size. If the difference in size is significant, a situation may arise when part of the candied fruit has already acquired the correct condition, and the other part is not yet ready.

If the melon is soft and aromatic, that is, completely ripe, the preparation process changes slightly:

1. They wash and cut melon so that it is convenient to eat.
2. The juicy and soft part of the fruit is eaten, leaving the crusts and a layer of hard flesh on them. If there is no such layer, then candied fruits have nothing to do. Have to go to the store and choose another melon.
3. The hard flesh is cut with a knife from the peel and divided into cubes or strips 1 cm thick.

Despite the often found name “candied fruit from melon peels”, the peels themselves, that is, the rough outer shell, are unsuitable for food and are not used in cooking.

Candied Melon Recipes

Candied fruits are pieces of fruit, cooked in thick sugar syrup and dried.

In the classic recipe, only 4 ingredients are used:

• water;
• sugar;
• lemon acid;
• flesh of melon.

It is important to consider the proportions of the products. If the melon is not very juicy, then 2 parts of sugar are taken for 1 part of water, otherwise it will need more - 3 parts. This rule cannot be neglected. Lack of sugar is fraught with unpleasant consequences - candied fruits will cook longer and spoil quickly. And an excess of this ingredient will lead to the fact that the pieces of melon will become literally stone.

Citric acid is added to taste. The recommended amount is 2 g for every 250 ml of water used in boiling the syrup. If you want to give candied fruit an expressive aroma, you can also add vanilla or zest, cut from lemons and oranges.

However, do not limit yourself to the classic cooking option.

Candied fruit

To make candied fruit bright and colorful, instead of water, use berry and vegetable juices:

• raspberry - for red;
• orange, carrot - for orange;
• spinach - for green;
• blueberry - for blue.

The saturation of the shade depends on the concentration of the juice.

The disadvantage of this method is that melon pieces will have to be cooked not in one container, but in several at once - by the number of colors.

Candied hedgehogs

They look unusual, and exotic notes appear in the taste. Making such candied fruits is easy - just add coconut flakes to the syrup. Pour it not immediately, but before the last stage of boiling.

As a rule, for a syrup prepared from 250 ml of water, 50 g of chips is enough. If desired, you can increase its amount to 60–70 g.

Candied fruit

Candied fruits will be as beautiful as in a store if you follow these steps step by step:

• In the evening, boil the syrup.
• Pour melon pieces into a pan with hot syrup and leave the lid overnight. Can be covered with gauze or sieve.
• In the morning, pour the syrup into another pan and put on the stove. It should boil for a while to evaporate the juice that came out of the melon (and it turns out quite a lot).
• When the volume of the syrup is reduced to the original, pour pieces of melon into the pan and cook for 5 minutes over medium heat. Time is counted after boiling the syrup.
• Then the pan is removed from the stove and left with all contents for 3–8 hours. The longer, the better the melon is soaked in syrup.
• After the specified time, the procedure is repeated. Three or four repetitions are usually enough. In the last step, citric acid is added. The readiness of candied fruits is determined by their appearance - as soon as the pieces have become glass-transparent, it is time to finish cooking.
• Ready candied fruits are taken out with a slotted spoon and thrown into a colander to get rid of the remnants of syrup.



• After a few hours, you can start drying. Dry melon candied fruit in the oven at a temperature of about 50 ° C. You can also use an electric dryer or simply direct a stream of air from a fan onto a baking sheet with pieces.
• Dried candied fruit roll in icing sugar so that they are not sticky.

Making candied fruit from a melon takes about 2 days, but only 1.5–2 hours are spent on the process itself. By the way, making this treat yourself is not only simple, but also beneficial - the cost of a kilogram of the finished product is much lower than when buying in a store.