



During my June trip to Austin, I was accompanied by my friends Chris and Mick, and we stayed through the weekend to truly enjoy the city. During this trip, we had many vodka watermelon shots (vodka shot with a watermelon back) on Rainey Street. One bartender told us that watermelon juice will cure hangovers, prevent muscle cramps and cool down your body temp. I'm not sure if any of these claims are true, but I do know it's pretty tasty.





Since I have a whole ten days off before my next business trip, I decided to do an actual grocery trip and purchase a watermelon to make my own juice. It's really easy to do and totally worth the 10 minutes it will take to make this amazing juice.





Here's what you need (so simple):

watermelon (I prefer seedless)

knife

blender

mint leaves (optional)



Cut your watermelon into off the rind (leave a little pink on the rind for another recipe coming soon) and then into cubes of similar size. Fill your blender or mason jar (you may recall I prefer to use mason jars on my blender) with the watermelon, but leave a little room for blending.

Use the food chop setting to break up the watermelon. Once you do that, your jar will have room to add more watermelon.

Add more watermelon. This is where I add mint, too. Then repeat blending on the food chop setting.



Blend a little more on food chop, then switch to pulverize or frozen drinks (depending on your blender). You'll end up with pure juice if you blend it long enough. Some recipes call for straining the pulp, but I actually prefer it.





Watermelon juice is mostly water (duh) and has about 70 calories and 16 net grams of carbs per cup. Because I am doing a low-carb diet, I generally mix the juice with soda water from my soda stream . It gives me a quick pick me up and cures sugar cravings.





I did find an article that watermelon juice might help sore muscles, As for curing hangovers, I'll have to wait until I have a non-work travel weekend to test that theory.





And as for keeping the rinds, stay tuned as I'll post my watermelon rind pickle recipe later this week.



OR if you want to be super awesome, and have a drill, you can just skip everything above and do this.





I visit Austin a lot for work, in fact I've been to Austin five times since last October, and have another trip planned this October. I could go on and on about my love for Austin (I call it my third home, after Detroit and Seattle, of course) but let's just focus on one amazing Austin bar delicacy - watermelon juice.