I stopped by the nearby grocery store yesterday (Christmas Eve) and they had some for 50 cents each, so I decided to buy one. I watched a YouTube video on how to open one, and it tasted wonderful (I’ve had arils, but not straight from the fruit) but holy cannoli, was it messy! I should have worn a bunny suit and covered my counter with a tarp! I didn’t make that big of a mess back when I would prepare casseroles for 70 for the soup kitchen.
Yes, it’s messy. I usually clear the countertop and wear something I don’t mind getting stained. Some sites suggest opening the pomegranates over a bowl of water; the arils drop to the bottom and the spongy white mesocarp floats. That might help contain the spray.
And BTW, if I’m going to that much trouble to prepare, I open four or six pomegranates and store the arils in the refrigerator.
Lots of delicious recipes (like yam and cashew enchiladas with pomegranate, or delicata squash with feta and pomegranate) online if you poke around.
We had a pomegranate tree when I was growing up. My mother insisted that we children had to eat them outside, no exceptions.
I later learned a technique that was far tidier. I rarely break a single seed. There is little to no mess. One carefully digs out the central pith under the flower remnant with the sharp point of a knife without breaking any seeds, then slice the fruit skin into seven or eight segments, making very shallow cuts that never pierce the fruit just below. then carefully break the whole thing apart from the center, as you might a peeled navel orange. Go slowly. Now you tenderly break off a few seeds at a time and pop them in your mouth. It’s not like eating other fruit. More of a meditation.
A lovely description!
I do know that pomegranates are a staple of Mediterranean cooking. Me? I made cranberry Jello with them. It’s not fully set up yet, but it smells wonderful.
That sounds yummy.
I have a pomegranate tree in the back yard. Always yields more fruit than I can ever use. I always tear the fruit apart under water. Works like a charm.
My wife is Persian, and pomegranates feature heavily in Iranian cuisine, so we go through a lot of them every year.
I’ll echo those above who suggest there’s a clean and efficient way to open them for seeing. If you do a very shallow cut around just the flower end, and pry it out, you can see the pith walls separating the inner chambers. Sort of like this:
(I prefer to do a square cut, four lines bordering the flower bit, because it gives me corners I can use to lever out the cut section. This was just the best picture I could find quickly, showing the view down into a cut fruit with the pith borders clearly visible.)
Then just run your knife down the outside of the pomegranate, following the lines suggested by the pith walls as shown in the picture. The pomegranate can then be easily separated into sections. No more squirting juice.
I do love me some pomegranates. We get ours from Costco, where they tend to be extremely large and generally of good quality, when in season. I’ll spend a pleasant hour or two in front of the TV in the kitchen, opening 4 or 5 of them which gives me a good quart of those tasty arils. I’ve become pretty good at that, using the technique described above by @Cervaise.
We use them a lot on salads, and the rest usually just get snacked on.
I do the ‘bisect-around-the-equator, then beat with a wooden spoon’ method. Works for me.
I do this, except i start by cutting it in half. I’m going to try this method.
I had a few very nice glasses of pomegranate juice when I was visiting Israel a few years ago.
Of course, the vendor had to deal with all the messy details!
They do seem to have a strong tendency to stain things…
Well, mine wasn’t nearly that neat. Also, it was too old, and i had to discard parts that weren’t crisp. (Soggy white arils aren’t worth eating.) But i did remove the flower end, score the skin, and to it into hunks. My hands got sticky, but i only got a few drops of juice on the plate, and i ended up with a bowl of peel and a smaller bowl of delicious arils.
I like em, too much trouble.
This was explained to my brother and me by our very upset mother after we had a pomegranate seed fight in my bedroom.
I never had one. Let Hades go fuck himself.
Here’s a recipe I work from:
In the past I’ve used other spices, like smoked paprika.
Tonight we’re making it with a lot more pomegranate seeds, a casein-free crumbly ricotta, and a mix of toasted pepitas and pistachios. I coat with oil and herbs in a bowl, not directly on the baking sheet. I use olive oil, not spray. While the squash cooks, I roast the delicata seeds with a pinch of salt in a 325° toaster oven, stirring relatively frequently.
You can also buy packaged pomegranate arils, which don’t have the white pith. They’re still messy.