How to Deseed a Pomegranate
For as long as I remember growing up, pomegranate season was one of my favorite times of year.
As a kid, pomegranates are these mysterious fruits that are so difficult to eat. From a kid perspective, a pomegranate might as well be child proof. Without a knife you really aren’t going to have much luck digging into them. If your child does have a knife and access to a pomegranate, I have the number of a great cleaner, because your house is going to be stained with red everywhere.
In Persian culture, the pomegranate or Anar as it’s called in Farsi, plays a major role in everything from cuisine to literature to historical artifacts. To this day, you can find examples of pomegranates in bas reliefs in Persepolis .
It’s probably one of the most quintessential Persian things out there, Iranians love to claim things and I dare you to try and tell an Iranian person that pomegranates are not important to their culture.
Pomegranates appear in Persian food in every shape and form. They’ll use it’s syrup for stews, they’ll use the arils as a topper for all kinds of dishes, or they’ll just drink the juice. Pomegranate juice has been a mainstay in Iranian culture for quite some time, it’s only in the past decade with the help of POM that the pomegranate has hit the mainstream.
Iranians would say, “Psh.. I knew Pomegranates when they were cool. Now they’ve sold out.”
Pomegranates are super duper healthy for you and are so tasty. The only barrier to eating them all the time is the mess that usually results from trying to open one. I don’t know about you but it’s usually a lot of red everywhere if you just go willy nilly into a pomegranate.
As a kid, my mom would prepare it for us by giving us wedges of pomegranate, we’d basically bite into it like savages until it was all gone. But that was in the comfort of our own home, without anyone watching us.
I love to deseed pomegranates every week so I have I can have them ready for breakfast each day for the work week. They keep very well in the fridge once you have deseeded the pomegranate.
So the question becomes, how do you deseed a pomegranate without making a mess?
First, cut around the pomegranate, basically forming like an equator around the pomegranate. Don’t cut so deep that it cuts into the arils, just cut deep enough so that you can pull it up apart with your hands.
Now with a large bowl at the ready, take a wooden spoon and hit the red skin side of the pomegranate as you hold the pomegranate in your hand, with the back of the wooden spoon.
The arils should come pouring out after a few whacks.
This video explains the basic principal behind the deseeding technique.
While technically you are supposed to cut around the pomegranate and pull it apart so you don’t cut any of the arils and make a mess, I like to cut the pomegranate into wedges. Everything comes out so much easier this way when you hit the pomegranate with your spoon.
This will keep for at least 7 days. It goes great as a snack or with yogurt.
Enjoy!
