How to Cook with Bitter Melon

Learning how to cook with bitter melon is a simple yet rewarding task. Asian bitter melon is a gourd that many of us have had to learn to love, with its distinctly bitter flavor, and hard crunchy texture.

First, when picking out your melons, look for bright green gourds that have a firm skin. Avoid storing the melons in bags with moisture, as this will cause them to mold quickly.

Wash your melons well and cut them in half. You will a light green pith with hard brown seeds in the middle.

Grab a spoon and scrape out the seeds and pith. It should come out in one piece. Discard the middle once it is removed.

Once the seeds are scraped out, cut the bitter melon as you would like.

You will often see bitter melon in half circles, as seen in this picture. This is because cutting it like this is the easiest and simplest way to cut up this fibrous fruit. Cutting it like this also makes it easy to eat.

Recipes with Bitter Melon

There are a couple of commonly accepted ways learn how to cook with bitter melon – one that you will often see is Bitter Melon with Eggs. Cooking the asian fruit with eggs adds texture to the eggs and takes some of the bite away from the melon.

You will also often see the bitter melon stir fried as another standard ingredient. It is a fibrous vine fruit that holds up well against high heat, so once prepared, it will do well in something like a Tofu Stir Fry.

Where to find Bitter Melon

There are a couple places to find bitter melon, as it can be difficult to come across in your standard Western grocery store.

Places such as H-Mart or 99 Ranch Market will have Bitter Melon, but Amazon.com will also be able to supply the exotic fruit.

How to Make Bitter Melon Less Bitter

While it’s not entirely possible to make bitter melon entirely less bitter, there are ways to extract some of the bitter flavor.

After removing the seeds and chopping the gourd, add the bitter melon to a large bowl of liberally salted water. Let the melon soak for 20 – 30 minutes. The salt will extract some of the bitter flavor from the gourd. After allowing it to soak, rinse the vegetable well.

What Kind of Fruit is a Bitter Melon?

A bitter melon is a part of the gourd family. It is a vine fruit that is closely related to the cucumber, pumpkin, squash and zucchini.

What are the Benefits of Bitter Melon?

There are many benefits from eating bitter melon. It’s a staple in many Asian cuisines because of the multitude of health benefits.

Bitter melon is known to help lower blood sugar. It has long been used by indigenous populations to control blood sugar. It is also suggested that the gourd has cancer-fighting properties as well as decrease cholesterol levels.