With watermelon rind, what you get is pickles. In Russia, German immigrants used to pickle whole watermelons, rind and all. At some point, many cooks started leaving out the rind and just pickling ...

In the field they don't stop to thump the watermelons, they just look at them." The watermelon rind often provides clues to its ripeness, Egel said. "A watermelon that is ripe will be faded on the top ...