Winter melon
Benincasa hispida · Melon
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Winter melon (Benincasa hispida), also called wax gourd, ash gourd, white gourd or tung kua, is a large oblong-to-round gourd of the cucumber family, ripening to a pale blue-green skin coated in a chalky white wax. Its watery, mild, faintly sweet white flesh has little flavour of its own and is prized in East and Southeast Asian cooking as a near-neutral vegetable for clear soups, braises, stir-fries and the translucent candied sweet winter-melon strips.
Picking a good onedrag
Cured hard, bloom intactBare, soft-spotted, weeping
Shop firmEveryday bestThe all-rounder: clear soups, braises, stir-fries, candied strips.
BloomBloom patchy where hands have been
Rind under a nailNail marks it, will not pierce
Stem scarStub gone, scar dry and closed
Smell at the scarFaint clean green at the scar
What you get from one
71%
Edible part
5.7 kg of flesh - rind, stem and seedy core off
8028 g
Weight each
each one
55%
Juice
About 550 ml a kilo
Keeping ittap a temperature
Below 13 C the rind pits and waterlogs, so a whole gourd keeps worse in the fridge than on a cool shelf; a cut wedge is the exception, so wrap and chill that.
70-85%
Humidity
Open and airy
Airflow