Food News and Trends Trends Got Watermelon? This Shocking Party Trick Will Blow Your Guests Away They’ve probably never seen watermelon cut this way. By Katherine Martinko Katherine Martinko Katherine Martinko is a well-respected writer, editor, and author with over 10 years' experience in digital publishing. She loves food, cooking, recipes, and kitchen-related content, and has written extensively about it on a number of different platforms, from Treehugger (where she worked as a long-time senior editor) to her personal Substack, The Analog Family. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto. Allrecipes' editorial guidelines Published on July 25, 2023 Close Photo: Flavio Coelho/Getty Images Watermelon is one of summer's most delicious foods, but it can be annoying to cut up. It's big and it rolls around. It has a thick skin and, sometimes, way too many seeds. It can be slippery and unwieldy, wet and sticky, and it requires a very large bowl to hold the pieces, not to mention another for the rinds. But if you persist in cutting it up, it is well worth the effort—hydrating, refreshing, and fun for kids to eat. There are numerous workarounds for cutting watermelon that show up at this time of year. People like to claim they have developed the best way to serve this big awkward fruit, but one approach that caught our attention recently is Mark Rober's technique for "skinning" a watermelon. Rober, a former NASA engineer and current YouTube star with over 24.5 million subscribers, takes a playful approach to watermelon prep. The video opens with him popping a whole, peeled watermelon out of its shell, much to the amazement of his young nephews. It’s like a fruit-based magic trick. He then proceeds to show how he did it. Basically, you take two watermelons of similar shape and size. One gets peeled with a knife and then smoothed completely, using a new kitchen scrub pad, so that there are no rough edges or white lines remaining. The other watermelon gets cut in half, with each half scooped out, saving the fruit to eat later. Then the skinned watermelon fits inside the hollowed-out watermelon halves, making it look like a whole intact watermelon. Pull it apart, and voilà! You reveal the whole peeled watermelon that will make guests gasp in amazement! It can then be sliced easily for serving. Rober goes on to say, "So, depending on the size of your watermelon, average prep time is about 10 minutes, which is less time than making most other summer party dishes, like gross potato salad, which—let's face it—nobody really likes." Clearly, he has not tried Allrecipes' World's Best Potato Salad, which has a nifty secret to its own creation, but we will forgive him in light of his own impressive contribution to summer party-culinary excellence in the form of this ingenious watermelon trick. Give it a try for yourself and see what reaction you get from guests. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Tell us why! Other Submit