Cantaloupe

A whole cantaloupe keeps a few days on the counter to finish ripening, then about 2 weeks refrigerated. Cut cantaloupe must be refrigerated and keeps 3–4 days.

Scrub the rind with a clean brush under running water before cutting. For cantaloupe this is not a nicety — the netted rind is genuinely difficult to clean and this is the single most important handling step for this fruit.

Ripe cantaloupe is strongly aromatic and will scent everything in your refrigerator, so store it wrapped or in a sealed container.

A ripe melon gives slightly at the blossom end and smells sweet through the rind. The stem end should have a smooth, slightly sunken scar — evidence it separated naturally rather than being cut off early.

Cut cantaloupe freezes acceptably in chunks for smoothies, though the texture softens considerably.

Cantaloupe carries the most serious food safety history of any fruit sold in the US, and the reason is its rind.

The netted, raised, corky surface provides an enormous number of crevices where bacteria can lodge and where they are physically protected from rinsing. Melons grow in contact with soil, and that rough surface is far harder to clean than a smooth-skinned honeydew or watermelon.

The 2011 Listeria outbreak traced to cantaloupe from Jensen Farms in Colorado killed 33 people and remains one of the deadliest foodborne illness outbreaks in modern US history. Cantaloupe has also been repeatedly linked to Salmonella outbreaks.

The mechanism is the same as for other melons but amplified: a knife carries surface contamination into flesh that is high-moisture, sugary, and only mildly acidic at around pH 6.1 — hospitable enough that bacteria multiply readily. Cut cantaloupe is classified as a potentially hazardous food and must be refrigerated.

So: scrub the rind under running water before cutting, refrigerate cut melon within two hours, and use it within 3–4 days.

For quality, look for soft mushy spots, mold at the stem scar, a fermented or alcoholic smell, and slimy or watery flesh. Netting that has gone dark and wet is a warning.