When the harvest ripens, I want to keep it completely until the very cold weather and not miss a single berry, not a single fruit or vegetable. But what to do if the usual preservation is already tired and you want something new - of course, make honey from watermelon, the recipe of which you will find here. We offer you only a proven method of preparing this wonderful preparation for the winter, which will delight both friends and loved ones.

To make honey from watermelon, we need only one ingredient - ripe sweet watermelons and nothing else, no sugar, no additional spices or seasonings.

So, how to make such an unusually tasty and simple treat for the whole family?

honey from watermelon

No matter how much raw material we have, no proportions need to be observed anyway.

How to make honey: step by step description

Step 1

Thoroughly wash 2-3 large watermelons with a sponge, wipe them dry with a towel and prepare a large enameled bowl or pan. We cut the watermelons into halves immediately above the dishes so as not to lose a single drop of juice - we only need it.

There we scrape out all the pulp with a spoon along with the bones. We remove the crusts, we will no longer need them (can be used for cooking), and rub the pulp through a sieve or a large sieve to remove the bones. We also throw them away.

Step 2

The mashed puree must now be squeezed out. This process is not fast, so please be patient.

• We take gauze, fold it, depending on the density, into two or three layers and squeeze the wiped pulp in small portions.
• We put it in the very center of the cut, a few tablespoons each, and twist the fabric with a bag, squeezing the juice into another clean bowl, in which we will boil our honey.

If you put a large portion in a gauze cut, it will not be possible to squeeze out the juice completely, and strong twisting can tear the fabric.

Step 3

• When all the pulp is processed, put the resulting juice on the fire.
• Bring it to a boil, hold for literally 2-3 minutes and turn it off. In the first brew, boiling it for a long time is useless.
• We give the juice to cool so that the hand endures, and re-pass through cheesecloth. We wring out in the same way as for the first time, but we take the fabric in 3-4 layers to hold very small fragments.

The resulting juice must be completely clean from foreign inclusions - this is the key to the quality of future honey.

Step 4

Now we put the juice to boil. The process takes from 3 to 6 hours, depending on the quality of the pulp. If the watermelon was very ripe and sweet, thickening will pass quickly enough due to the high content of glucose and sucrose in it.

Cook the juice without a lid over very low heat, from time to time, every 6-7 minutes, stirring it with a wooden spatula or spoon. It is also necessary to remove the foam - we do not need it in honey.

Step 5

While cooking is in progress, prepare jars for storage. Since honey will boil down 5-7 times and turn out to be very sweet, you will need very small jars - 0.5 liters or even less.

We boil such a small container as follows: put it in a saucepan with lids and fill it with water on your finger. Put on fire and bring to a boil. We hold the jars in this way for 15 minutes, and then take them out with tongs on a clean, ironed towel upside down and let dry.

Step 6

We check whether the honey is ready as follows: drip on a plate or saucer. If the drop is thick and dense, similar in color and consistency to ordinary buckwheat honey, that is, it spreads slowly and is terracotta or brown in color, then it is ready.

Pour honey into jars and close it with clean lids. We turn our jars over and wrap them, as usual, until they cool completely. Then we remove the honey in the cellar.

Now you know how to make honey from watermelon to make it thick, sweet and very tasty. There is no difficulty in this, but this blank will require a lot of time and patience.

If you want to surprise your guests with beautiful and practical cuts, take the advice of our chef.

Nardek is a fragrant watermelon honey made from overripe striped berries. It is believed that nardek is an invention of Central Asian cuisine, later adopted by the Don Cossacks. Over time, almost all melon growers began to cook watermelon honey, because the safety of the harvest until next year guaranteed the satiety of a large family. Today, watermelon honey is brewed not only in South Asia, but also in the south of Russia, as well as in the Lower Volga region.

Nardek is the result of the folk experience of the Central Asian peoples. Since ancient times, the annual harvest of watermelons was so huge that they had to somehow be stored for the winter. It was impossible to eat the entire crop of watermelons, and watching how it disappears is also not the case. Striped berries were dried, salted, candied fruits and watermelon honey were cooked from them.

At its core, nardek is a thick boiled syrup made from juice and pulp, obtained as a result of boiling over an open fire. The main difference between watermelon honey and many other sweet delicacies is that it is prepared without sugar.

Sometimes watermelon honey called bekmes, but this is not entirely correct. Bekmes (grape honey) is a close relative of nardek, as well as irchal (bekmes with berries added) and kiem (fruit honey with sugar). The word “nardek” itself is of Turkish origin, meaning pomegranate juice syrup.

APPLICATION

Most often, nardek is used as a fragrant dessert served with tea instead of jam or preserves.

In the Cossack villages, pancakes and, casseroles and donuts are poured over people's deputies, or they are simply eaten with a piece of freshly baked bread. Watermelon honey is also used as a filling for pies, cheesecakes, cookies. Candied watermelon is also made from nardek.

To quench your thirst, you can dilute nardek with water and get a delicious natural drink.

For the treatment and prevention of liver diseases watermelon honey added to the decoction of oats.

For the treatment of kidneys and diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, nardec is added to tea or to special decoctions.

Rosehip decoction with watermelon honey is an excellent prophylactic for cardiovascular diseases.

Watermelon honey with onion juice and apple cider vinegar will help cure even an old cough.

COOKING

Nardek cooking begins in late autumn, when the main harvest of the striped berry has already been sold. From small watermelons cut in half, the juicy pulp is taken out with a spoon, which is passed through a frequent hair sieve. The resulting liquid is poured into a cast-iron vat and placed on an open fire in the yard. The juice is boiled until it turns into a thick brown syrup with the smell of watermelon.

The density of watermelon honey depends on the cooking time. As a rule, its consistency is similar to heavy cream or young honey. Ready nardek is poured into containers, most often into glass jars or clay pots. You can store nardek in a cool basement or refrigerator.

BENEFIT

Nardek contains vitamins and useful elements that are in the watermelon itself. These are vitamins C and PP, B and E, as well as beta-carotene, iron, calcium, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, folic acid and pectin.

useful for bronchitis and laryngitis, diseases of the cardiovascular system. It treats colds and restores the work of the stomach, increases the level of hemoglobin and has a beneficial effect on the functioning of the liver and kidneys.

Watermelon season is a great opportunity to enjoy the flavors of this berry as well as get the most of its health benefits. Many housewives make preparations for the winter, freezing, boiling, pickling, salting watermelons. But few people know that you can cook another wonderful delicacy - honey from watermelons. It is well stored, and on a cold winter evening it will warm you with a wonderful taste and aroma of a sunny summer.

What is it - And what is the name of this unusual delicacy? It is obtained from the juice of this berry, which is boiled until thickened. Surprisingly, neither sugar nor other additives are required to prepare the delicacy.

Honey or no honey?

As you can see, the bees do not participate in the preparation of this product. Maybe you shouldn't call it honey at all? In fact, the name is given rather because of the color and consistency. Outwardly, the treat really resembles natural honey collected by bees. Most Russian-speaking people familiar with this product call it watermelon honey.

Other names

Surprisingly, this product is very common abroad. As a rule, watermelon honey is called pekmez there. This word is of Asian origin. Along with it, the terms "bekmez" and "bekmes" are used, denoting the juice of berries or fruits boiled to a jelly-like consistency. The most common is the name "Nardek".

Origin of the recipe

Watermelon honey has always been boiled in autumn, when there are a lot of watermelons and they are inexpensive. The birthplace of this treat is considered to be Central Asia, where many peoples prepared it. Later, the experience of cooking and the recipe were adopted by the Don Cossacks. Thanks to them, the dish became widespread, many melon growers began to cook it.

Cossacks cooked nardek in late autumn. The main batch was already sold out, and the remaining small, but pot-bellied berries were used to make honey. Watermelons were cut in half, the pulp was scooped out with spoons, passed through a sieve to get juice. The resulting liquid was poured into a cast-iron cauldron, boiled over an open fire, without even adding sugar. The juice was boiled until it turned into a thick brown syrup. The consistency of the nardeq was supposed to resemble ordinary young honey. The readiness of the delicacy was determined on this basis. Ready honey was stored in clay pots or rolled into jars, as we do.

Adyghe people serve nardek for tea, pour it over pancakes, donuts and casseroles, spread it on bread.

Today, watermelon honey, the recipe of which continues to change, is brewed almost everywhere. Some add additional ingredients to it, giving new tastes and extending the shelf life, but someone remains true to the classics.

Benefit

Surely, before making honey from watermelons, you thought about whether this product is good for health. Nardek perfectly preserves all the benefits of fresh watermelon. No sugar is used in the preparation, the product achieves its taste only thanks to the content of natural ingredients.

Delicious delicacy strengthens the immune system and improves appetite. In addition, nardec has a beneficial effect on the functioning of the kidneys, liver, gastrointestinal tract and cardiovascular system. Doctors recommend including this product in the menu of those who suffer from tuberculosis and other acute and chronic respiratory diseases. Regular consumption of Nardec increases hemoglobin, helps to cope with atherosclerosis, and even prevents the growth of tumors.

Preparation of products for watermelon honey

Juice boils down a lot. In order to get a kilogram of the product, you need 15 kg of raw materials.

Choose sweet varieties with juicy flesh. Rinse the watermelons thoroughly, let them dry. Cut in half or into several pieces - as you prefer. Separate the pulp.

Getting juice

Go through the pulp, breaking or cutting into pieces and removing the stones. To squeeze the juice, you can use a juicer or squeeze it manually through a sieve. Many squeeze the resulting slurry also through gauze. If you do not remove all the bones and squeeze out the juice with a juicer before making honey from a watermelon, particles of seeds can get into the product. This will give it a bitter taste.

Cooking stage

Let's get down to the most responsible business. Honey from watermelons is boiled over medium heat, stirring and removing the foam. After a few hours, the juice will be reduced by half. Extinguish the fire, and pour the mass into another dish and let cool. Leave the nardek in a dark, cool place for 12 hours. Pass the juice through a sieve again, repeat the stage of boiling, settling and straining three times. Each time the syrup will thicken more and more.

You should not cook nardek in one go, because in this case it will turn out to be excessively dark, and it will burn to the bottom. It is better to spend time, make an effort - and the result will be delicious and beautiful honey from watermelons.

How to check readiness?

Transparent amber nardek should be thick enough. Put a few drops on a plate and rotate it - the honey will not spread. By the way, you can use this technique to determine the readiness of any jam.

Harvesting for the future

Ready honey from watermelons, remove from the stove and leave to cool. In the meantime, prepare the jars: wash, sterilize, wipe dry. When the nardek has cooled to 40 degrees, strain it through a sieve, and then arrange it in jars. It remains to seal tightly.

Storage

Cool the jars under a warm blanket, and then transfer them to the cellar, garage, shed - where it is cool. If space permits, jars can also be stored in the refrigerator. If you do not have a basement and a balcony, leave watermelon honey in the closet. Try to limit the amount of light.

Application of watermelon honey

This product can be used even during diets. Add a spoonful of honey to your drinks for sweetness. Watermelon honey is very sweet and fragrant, but not at all high-calorie. If you use it in reasonable quantities, it will not harm the figure. A few spoonfuls of nardek dissolved in a glass of water will help quench your thirst.

For colds, it is useful to prepare the following mixture: combine in equal parts honey from watermelons, apple cider vinegar and finely chopped onions. Stir and let it brew a little. It is recommended to dissolve a spoonful of the resulting product in the mouth slowly. To improve the functioning of the digestive tract, replace sugar in the diet with nardek. In acute conditions during liver diseases, exacerbations can be relieved with a decoction of oats with the addition of a small amount of watermelon honey. If you regularly take rosehip tea sweetened with watermelon honey, you can increase and stabilize the level of hemoglobin in the blood and get rid of pain in the heart.

You can eat this product just for fun. It can be added to fillings for pies, cheesecakes, pastries, combined with fruits and cottage cheese. Nardek is very tasty in combination with pancakes, donuts, pancakes.

The nutritional value

Before making honey from watermelon, many people learn about its low calorie content. 100 grams of nardec contains only 110 kilocalories, although this product contains about 60% sugar. For this reason, doctors are allowed to use it even for those who have diabetes. In addition, nardek contains 9% fat and no more than 1% protein.

Try this dessert for family and friends. This healthy treat will not leave anyone indifferent.

Today I will preserve watermelons for the winter. The marinade will not just be sweet and sour, but with honey. An original but easy-to-make recipe will surprise even the most sophisticated guests.

In winter, this preparation will become a real delicacy on the festive table.

For cooking, take the following ingredients:

watermelon - 3 kg;

honey - 50 gr;

water - 1.5 l;

sugar - 3 tablespoons;

salt - 1 tbsp;

vinegar 9% - 70 gr.

Thoroughly wash the watermelon with a brush and soap. If a specimen with dense pulp is caught, then the crust can be cut off. If the fruit is overripe, then we use it together with the peel. Cut a whole watermelon into 4 parts. Usually, one quarter is enough for one three-liter jar. We cut it across into slices.

We remove all the bones. We put the pieces of watermelon in.

Marinade for watermelons

Pour water into an enameled pan and put on a strong fire. When the water boils, add salt and sugar. After their complete dissolution and re-boiling, add honey and 9% vinegar. Mix well, wait for a boil over high heat and turn off.

Pour jars with pieces of watermelon with boiling marinade, wrap, turn over and leave to cool completely.

It is better to store canned watermelons in the basement or cellar.

Delicious homemade preparation served as a cold appetizer for main courses or as a dessert. It's who loves more. 😉

I looked at the site and was surprised that there is not a single recipe for making watermelon honey. This is my favorite treat, and with a cold, it simply has no equal. I hope it's useful to someone.

Ingredients for Watermelon Honey:

Watermelon honey recipe:

We will need:
Deep saucepan - 3 pieces
Kitchen paper towels
Aluminum basin with a thick bottom
Knife
Tablespoon - 2 pieces
Crusher
Sieve
Sterile gauze - 1 meter 20 centimeters
Skimmer

Preparing the watermelon
To begin with, on the stove, turned on to a strong fire, put a deep saucepan with plain water and bring it to a boil. We need water in order to boil the inventory that we will use during the preparation of honey.
To prepare watermelon honey or, as it is also called, nardek, you need to choose the most ripe watermelons of late varieties, in such watermelons there is more glucose and sucrose, which help the watermelon juice to become thicker during cooking.
First, rinse the watermelons under running cold water and dry with kitchen paper towels.
We take a clean aluminum basin with a thick bottom treated with boiling water and cut the watermelon into two halves directly above it with a knife, this process is necessary in order to preserve every drop of juice during cutting.

Then we take a clean tablespoon scalded with boiling water and take out the pulp from each half of the watermelon directly into an aluminum basin.
We take a clean, boiled water crush and knead the watermelon pulp with it to a puree state.
The pulp of the watermelon is dented, but there are bones left in it, which will be completely superfluous in honey.

Therefore, we install the same clean strainer on a clean, boiled-water-treated deep pan and wipe all the watermelon pulp through it with a tablespoon, so we separate the seeds.

We take clean sterile gauze and cut off 2 pieces of 60 by 60 centimeters from it with scissors treated with boiling water. We fold each piece in half and put a clean tablespoon of watermelon puree on one of them right in the middle. We connect the edges of the gauze with our hands so that we get a bag, and squeeze watermelon juice through it directly into an aluminum basin. After all the juice is squeezed out, we throw out the remaining watermelon pulp, and put the bowl with juice on the stove, turned on over high heat. Bring the juice to a boil, stirring vigorously and removing the foam from it with a clean, boiled-water skimmer. Be sure to remove the foam, as all dirt and nitrates are removed with it. It is not necessary to boil the juice for a long time, after boiling 2-3 minutes will be enough.
Let the hot watermelon juice cool to room temperature. We take the second piece of gauze and filter the cooled watermelon juice through it directly into a clean deep pan. We remove the gauze with the remnants of watermelon fibers, it will no longer be useful to us, and pour the juice from the pan into an aluminum basin in which it was boiled, and put it on the stove, turned on over a small fire.

The second brewing of watermelon juice lasts a very long time - from about 3 to 6 hours, this process depends on the ripeness of the watermelon and its juiciness. In order to get thick high-quality honey, boil watermelon juice until excess moisture evaporates from it. It should become very thick and decrease in volume by about 5 to 6 times, sometimes even more. During cooking, it is necessary to constantly, at intervals of 5 - 6 minutes, stir the watermelon mass with a slotted spoon so that the honey being prepared does not burn. The honey will change color and become light brown.

While honey is being cooked, remembering to stir it occasionally, prepare jars for storing it. Take 2 half-liter jars, 2 preservation lids and a large deep saucepan of about 5 liters, lower the container into it and pour water so that it is 2 fingers above the level of the jars. That's where we put the lids. On the stove, turned on to a strong fire, put a pan with jars and lids, sterilize the inventory in boiling water for 15 minutes. The time of sterilization of jars and lids is considered after boiling water. We take out the sterilized jars with tongs along with boiling water and put them on the table, previously covered with a waffle towel, and leave to cool in this form. We leave the lids in a saucepan with boiling water. After the water in the jars has cooled down, pour it out, cover the table with a new clean waffle towel, since the previous towel has been wet from water for a long time, and put the sterilized jars on it upside down.

In order to start canning watermelon honey, you need to be sure that it is ready. We take a clean sterile tablespoon treated with boiling water, collect a small amount of honey into it and drip onto a cold plate. The drop should be thick, very viscous and not spread over the entire plate, well, or if it spreads a little, then it should do it very slowly. The consistency of finished watermelon honey resembles ordinary honey or very thick cream. If the mass of honey you have prepared is thick and viscous, then it is ready. We turn the sterilized jars upside down, take one and put it in a clean, boiling water-treated deep plate, it is needed so that not a single drop of the nardek is lost, you can then eat the honey from the plate. With a clean ladle treated with boiling water, we scoop honey from the basin and pour it into the jar to the very top. We cover the jar with honey with a sterilized lid, which can be easily removed with a clean hand from the water, which has long cooled down. We cover the lid with a conservation key and twist it with a key so that the lid fits snugly against the neck of the jar.
The color of watermelon honey is dark red or even brown, the consistency is viscous, and the taste is very sweet. It is not necessary to cool honey under a blanket, like any other preservation, just put it in a cool place so that it cools down.

Nardek or, as it is also called, watermelon honey, served in a bowl with a teaspoon. It can be eaten separately with tea or coffee, can be spread on any kind of bread, used in the preparation of cakes and pies. Watermelon honey makes an excellent syrup for cakes, pretzels and gingerbread. Such honey has medicinal properties and improves digestion; very often it is added to children's cereals. Watermelon honey will delight you with its aroma and taste in winter.

- Watermelon honey tolerates storage perfectly, you can not preserve it, but simply tighten the neck of the jars with parchment paper and tie it with an elastic band or twine. It is better to store such honey in a dark, well-ventilated area.

- Watermelon pulp can be crushed with a blender or through a manual and electric meat grinder, but before using these units, the manual meat grinder must be boiled for 15-20 minutes in water, and the parts of the blender or electric meat grinder should be thoroughly rinsed and poured over with boiling water.

- If you can not have a lot of sugar, you follow the figure or you have diabetes, you should not use watermelon honey, it contains a lot of sucrose and glucose.

- If you took an unripe watermelon, it can also be used to make nardek, but such honey will be a little sour.

- According to the technology described above, it is possible to prepare other types of honey, it can be honey from mulberry, grape, melon or other sweet fruits. But remember that the fruits you choose must be non-acidic. Since condensed acid is tasteless and does not coagulate well during cooking.

- Carefully monitor the thickening of the juice, mix it thoroughly and often with a slotted spoon so that it does not burn, and there is no burning smell in the cooked honey.

- If you do not have an aluminum basin, it does not matter, you can use an enamel basin or pan. The main thing is that they have a thick bottom.