How to Cut a Cantaloupe

Hi this is chef Dave Bishop. Thank you for watching Chef to You. Today, I will show
you how to select and cut up a cantaloupe.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

Okay, first let’s go ahead and talk about how to select one. As you see, this one right
here, you got a little bit of green nut, nice filling in the outer area. Which one to look for,
you don’t want to find one who’s bruised. If you’re in the super market or in a fruit stand
and you can squeeze it, it’s kind of spongy, don’t buy it. Some people say you can smell
from the end right here. That’s okay, yeah, basically we can but that’s not true to tell, the
only way to try and you want the firmest, you want a looker green left down here and if
it’s dark brown, you see any kind of spots or the shells or spot in it, don’t buy it.

Let’s go and it cut off. Just want to bring some plastic over here. I just had some plastic
on the side to put on the scraps in. All right, we’ll start by cutting it in half, so I made it—
it can be recently that I have a unique way of cutting mine up. I use every cut for
restaurants or caterings, big events. All right, I’ll start right here, take your spoon, and
right down the center and get your seeds out. And you don’t want to be wasteful, you
want to get in there and dig out way too much, that’s food you’re going to wasting, let’s
go and switch over the yellow one. Do the same thing again. Just take your spoon, this is
a nice firm cantaloupe right here, it will last long in the refrigerator for seven days. It’s
beautiful for catering.

All right, now see I’ve got the seeds out but I didn’t dig all of them down and waste the
product. This is why I do mine a little differently, okay? I take mine and cut it in half pan
size and I turn around and cut it in half again, then ill take my knife, insert it right about
here and run all the way down through the center but not all with the end. You see you
got a little cut mark right in there.

Now, what I do in here is I cut all the way down and kind of let it release from the—each
of these is going to lay down flat. All right, so now, I’m going to use a bowl like a Viking
bowl right here. Okay, lay it all flat. Now, very carefully, take your sharp knife, I would
recommend a serrated edge, like very sharp then you cut all the way across the base right
here, you get all cantaloupe, no skin, not wasting any cantaloupe out of the skin. All
right?

Throw those over to a bowl over here, again take it right down the stem, and lay it out
like a Viking ship. Take your knife, cut it very long between the orange and the green.
Again, as you see it’s just the green, orange, we’re not wasting any products. Just your
place your stuff in a bowl right here.

I’m going to do the same thing with the rest of this right here. This right here, you cut it
all at one time. Even at home, I prefer to cut all in time kind of cutting board on the end
of the knife and all that, how did you cut the whole thing at one time and you can wrap
this, put it in the refrigerator, you can even choose to have this for lunch because you can
just eat the whole half with some other fruit so you might want to leave this as a half for
right now.

So I hope learned a new technique on how you can cut a cantaloupe, all right, we’ll be
right back.

That wasn’t too difficult was it? All right, very easy, we got a bowl right here, we had
half you can cut or you can wrap up for something else. You got your scraps right here,
cutting board, knife, spoon, clean it up, very simple.

This is Chef Dave Bishop’s cooking and teaching. You have a blessed day!