You can actually eat bitter melon when it's ripe. I want the ripe fruits because I like the taste of them when cooked. We cook them in a pressure cooker with ribs and never have enough to eat. It's hard to come by the ripe ones because it can rot easily. The ripeness I'm after is when the colors changes from green to orange. But not orange and so ripe that it falls apart when picking it. We don't eat the seeds. We've always scooped them out and discarded them.
Also delicious in teas by itself or with some goji berries boiled with it.
How many bitter melon plants do you usually grow? I'm wondering if 4 plants will be enough. Usually we use about 15lbs of bitter melon to prepare the dish with ribs. It feeds about 5 people.
Is it a productive plant?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeedman
In other words, the only flavor was what you added to them? 
Haven't figured out how to multi-quote here...
"I'm growing bitter melon this year. I wanted to get something orangey ripe instead of green."
They should only be eaten when green. The red pulp around the ripe seeds is edible though (but not the seeds themselves). Super productive here, I give away buckets full to Filipino friends. Really good bee plant too, and fragrant when in bloom.
The Italian edible gourd Cucuzzi is good, and is edible until fairly large (at which point they might become that "baseball bat squash"). The younger 'squash' (1-2" wide) can be peeled & cooked like zucchini; medium-large squash can be peeled & cored. Once the gourds stop growing, they begin to get fibrous. Night pollinated, so sometimes fruit set can be iffy... but if pollinators are present, very productive. |