National Watermelon Day – Recipes!

Its National Watermelon Day, and to celebrate the unofficial fruit of summer, I visited my friends at PIX11 to show some fun things you can do and make with a watermelon.

Watermelon Gazpacho

Ingredients:

• 6 cups chopped seeded watermelon (reserve the juice)
• 1 cup peeled, seeded and diced cucumber
• 1 red bell pepper, diced
• 1 yellow pepper, diced
• 1 orange pepper, diced
• 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely diced
• 6 celery hearts, diced
• ½ small red onion, finely diced
• ¼ cup finely chopped fresh mint
• ¼ cup finely chopped fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley
• Juice of 1 ½ limes (2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon juice)
• ½ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
• Freshly ground black pepper
• greek yogurt or sour cream (optional)
• 1 Avocado diced (optional)

Note: if you don’t like one of the veggies, you can omit or swap out with your fav veggie. Its hard to mess this up!

Directions:

1. Puree the watermelon chunks in a blender until smooth, set aside.
2. Toss the cucumber, bell peppers, jalapeno, celery, onion, herbs, lime juice, and salt in a large bowl. Pour the watermelon puree and reserved juice over the vegetables. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until well chilled, at least 1 hour.
3. Taste, then season with salt and black pepper, add more jalapeno. Serve very cold, topped with greek yogurt or sour cream. Top with diced or sliced avocado.

Watermelon Mango Salsa 

Ingredients:

• watermelon
• mango,
• jalapeno, diced
• red onion, diced
• cilantro
• fresh lime juice from 2 limes

Directions:

1. Cut up watermelon, mango into small cubes
2. Chop cilantro
3. In a large bowl, add watermelon, mango, jalapeno, red onion, and cilantro
4. Add lime juice, salt and pepper to taste
5. enjoy!

Watermelon Feta Salad

Ingredients:

• Small Watermelon, cut up into cubes
• 1/2 cup of kalamata olives
• 1/2 cup crumbled Feta Cheese
• fresh mint

Directions:

1. Slice watermelon in half and cut the watermelon into cubes
2. Keep the watermelon rind for a bowl
3. Chop a few mint leaves, set aside
4. In a large bowl, add watermelon cubes
5. Add in feta, olives, and mint
6. Toss gently
7. Taste, if needed add salt & pepper (the feta and olives are salty so you might not need any)
8. Serve in watermelon bowl, garnish with a few chopped mint leaves

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Limor is an on-air lifestyle and entertaining expert. She loves to share her favorite finds and recipes.