I have a potluck dinner coming up Friday. Based on what I have available and what I could get at the supermarket, I plan to do a couscous salad with pomegranate seeds.
Anybody ever tried this before? Any pointers, tips, or suggestions?
My only tip with couscous salad is that if you’ve used too much water to cook the couscous, or you’ve introduced watery ingredients that over-soak the couscous, and the couscous clumps up too much into soggy clumps, you can fix this by sprinkling raw couscous over the salad and mixing them in. The raw grains will soak up any extra moisture without the need for any further cooking. This is provided you can let it sit for at least 1.5 hrs before serving.
N.B. - I also made couscous salad for the last potluck I went to, but I’ve never used pomegranate seeds - sounds good though.
As above, don’t use too much liquid, and use a fork to fluff. I add in a little lemon juice and stock to the water to help season - pomegranate molasses is great too if you have some (but the lemon juice gives the astringency otherwise).
You can through in a mix of sauted vegetables - carrots, eggplant, zucchini, herbs (coriander, mint, parsley) whatever, maybe some spices (cumin, coriander, cardamon) - and don’t forget the nuts - I like pistachios which would look great with the pomegranate. Split this open, and give it a rap to help get those little jewels out - and then work your way through it, peeling as you go, trying not to eat too many on the way.
Nice suggestions, Girl From Mars. I’ll add nuts and sauteed shredded carrots.
And from Isamu’s suggestion, I’ll use less water than normal, as the pomegranate seeds will add liquid.
Follow-up: The couscous salad came out well. I should have used more pomegranate seeds, though. The hard part proved to be getting the seeds into the salad, as my fiancee helped make the salad and pomegranate is her favorite food.
Sounds delicious, care to share the whole recipe?
Best way to seed a pomegranate is to do it under a big bowl of water. Nothing flies anywhere, and the seeds fall to the bottom and the membranes float to the top.
2 cups couscous, prepared according to the directions on the package.
1 can chickpeas
Shredded carrot, lightly sauteed
Chopped walnuts, lightly sauteed
1 pomegranate, seeded
Cumin and other spices to taste
Mix well. Chill & serve.
I am so confused by pomegranates. As kids, we never ate the seeds. We’de spit them into a dish or our napkins after crushing out the juices. I don’t know if we were freaks or what, but that’s how we were taught and my parents were extensive world travelers who had also lived, twice, in Israel. So I assumed when they told us to spit the seeds it was how everyone did it.
But clearly, this was incorrect, because there’s no way dinner guests were discretely dropping chewed up pomegranate seeds into their napkins… is there?
Do people eat the seeds???
Yep! In fact, they are sold as such, pre-packaged at Trader Joe’s. Yummy stuff!
The fruit was at the peak of ripeness. The seeds were OMOg delicious.
Ok, I think we’re still talking across each other.
When I say the “Fruit” of the pomegranate I mean the small, jewel-tone nubbins packed within the white pithy chambers of the pomegranate
What I call the “seed” of the pomegranate is the small white kernel left after all the juice is sucked out of the fruit and the skin scraped off with your teeth – in my experience it isn’t sweet at all, in fact its bitter. I am lead to believe that some people eat this seed, which, in childhood, I always discarded after consuming the fruit. Do they crunch them (ick, bitter) or swallow them whole?
Ah, now I understand.
The nubbin is the seed, and it has the hard tip. I’ve learned to crush (not chew) the seed, as chewing causes the tip to get stuck in my teeth. Then the hard bits can be swallowed whole.
The juicy bits (nubbin/seed) were, as I said, OMOg delicious.
I eat the whole nubbin, as it were.
Thanks to the OP for clueing me in to this. I had never heard of couscous pomegranate salad. It sounded so good, I made it today. I used a recipe I found for pomegranate and pistachio couscous salad, it was supposed to be made with chopped mint and parsley. I didn’t have any, so I used chopped cilantro. I also added shredded carrot, green onions, and dried cranberries. I made the pomegranate vinegarette dressing to go with it. This was unbelievably good! Also, I found out I can get all the free pomegranates I want, my ex sister- in- law has a pomegranate tree in her back yard and they don’t use many. This makes me wonder what else is out there that’s incredibly good, that I just haven’t heard about.