I have always said that I would gladly pay more in order to get a ripe, sweet melon than throw 3 or 4 dollars down the drain for a tasteless, unripe melon, and apparently I’m not alone. There is a new melon on the market from Brazil. It’s called a Dino melon because it looks a bit like a dinosaur (dino) egg. It’s white-ish with some specks of green on the skin. The flesh is also a light color and in the melon department, it’s as good as it gets.
I had seen a display of Dino melons at Sam’s recently. The sign said super-sweet. They were about $5 each, but it was worth the gamble. So I paid my five bucks and took my chances.
This one, at least, was superb – sweet, full of flavor, and a perfect texture. It was like a lush melon you might expect to get from a hula girl on a tropical island. The melons are said to have a very high brix level, the measurement of sugars in a piece of fruit. As the fruit ripens the starch turns into sugar, the flesh softens, and the seeds harden.
I think production on this new variety of melon is limited, so you will probably not find them very often – but if you do, buy one or several. I am going to save a few seeds and try them in my garden this year. Maybe I’ll do a few tango steps near my garden bed and the seeds will think they are still in Brazil. It might work?
Dino melons. Melon-lovers, remember that name.