Pomegranate: how to humanly eat a godly fruit

Pomegranate for the Masses

Although immensely popular in the middle east and Mediterranean region, pomegranates were relatively unknown in North America until very recently. The rapid large scale adoption of the fruit in this region can be accredited primarily to POM Wonderful, a pomegranate juice company that rolled out an extensive marketing campaign utilizing widespread mass advertising in combination with backing $25 million worth of scientific studies and releasing data "proving" the magical healing powers of the godly fruit. They also had a strong celebrity support base, providing influential PR for their product. (See an example of their ad which was banned by the Advertising Standards Authorty as it exaggerated the healing powers of the drink)

Pomegranate Everything

Thanks to these efforts, you will now find pomegranate in everything from salad dressing to martinis, even Tropicana has a pomegranate and blueberry variety and you can buy pomegranate extract supplements (not that we recommend any of these products, in fact none of these products including POM juice remotely resemble the real thing)

The offshoot effect of this mass marketing for pomegranate based products has resulted in an increase in the actual consumption of pomegranates (Who would have thought? Now only if persimmons could be juiced and if we had $25 millions dollars to spend on scientific research proving that they hold the magical healing ingredient known as: "vitamin c").

The Struggle

And so the struggle begins…I was watching a co-worker trying to peel the fruit, like it was an orange or something. And another friend spent 20 minutes deseeding the fruit, bit by bit, both messy and time consuming. A foodie friend of mine showed off his complicated fill a bowl with water and deseed them by hand under the water method, then he sent me the YouTube video to demonstrate , you be the judge.

I decided it’s time to put an end to this misery and write about the best way to deseed a pomegranate. This method will take less than a minute once mastered, and takes the chore out of eating a pomegranate.

How to deseed a pomegranate in 1 minute

What you'll need:

• A lovely ripened pomegranate (any variety will do, did you know there are over 740 varieties identified in Iran alone! If you like it a bit sweet, go for the rose/white coloured variety)
• A deep bowl
• A spoon
• Sea Salt (optional, but highly recommended)
• Knife
• Cutting board

Step 1. Cut the pomegranate in half over a cutting board. You can put a napkin to avoid staining the board, but I like the natural foodie colours that my cutting board absorbs.

Step 2. Grab a deep bowl and a spoon. Hold the pomegranate over the bowl with the inside facing down. Now squeeze the pomegranate, almost as you would with lemon, in that you’re not squeezing equally inwards, but that as though you are opening a door knob with your fingers. The goal is to not get the juice of the pomegranate (I’ll cover that later), but to loosen the overall structure of the seeds so that they are no longer supporting each other. Think of the structure of the seeds as the pillars that hold the dome, and by squeezing and twisting you’re breaking the pillars. You should see a few seeds already drop into the bowl, but if you see a lot of juice you’re squeezing too hard inwards and not twisting enough.

Step 3. Grab the very end of the spoon with your thumb and index finger, and smack the back of the fruit in a clean and firm motion. Kind of like a whip, but using more of your wrist than elbow. Watch the seeds drop out perfectly. This should get about 95% of the seeds out, for the remaining 5% of the seeds which will be stuck to the skin, turn the skin inside out and they will drop into the bowl.

Step 4. If the pomegranate wasn’t in the fridge, put it in the fridge for 10-15 minutes, they taste yummier when they are cooled down. Add some high quality sea salts, grab a spoon and enjoy.

(real)Pomegranate Juice On The Go

So you want to know what pomegranate juice really tastes like after you paid $4 for the concentrate version and were utterly disappoint and ripped off. Plus you’re on the run like me and don’t have the time or even the right juicing apparatus. Here is a quick lovely method that is surely to get you hooked.

What you'll need:
A pomegranate (yep that’s it)

Step 1. Grab a nice pomegranate with perfect skin. The skin can’t be dry or cracked, this is very important.

Step 2. Now hold the pomegranate with two hands and use the middle part of your thumb to crack the seeds inside the pomegranate. The pressure on the skin will cause the seeds to burst and the juices to be released, the perfect skin will keep the juice inside the pomegranate. Spend time (5-10 minutes) getting the juice from all the seeds. The key is to press as hard as possible without puncturing a hole on the skin. That’s why it’s important to keep your nails out of this. You will soon start to feel a very mushy pomegranate filled with lots of liquids. Once you feel like it’s all mush, and there are no hard parts (if there are you haven’t crack all of it, keep going at it).

Step 3. Now place the pomegranate in your mouth, and using your tooth pierce a very small hole on the skin. You will immediately feel the juices gushing in your mouth. A combination of pressing on the skin and using your mouth you will get most of the juices out. Once you feel like there is no more juice, keep pressing very hard to get the seeds at the very centre of the fruit that you may have missed. To confirm your success you can rip the pomegranate in half and see what remains.

Bon apetite.