The easy way to open a Pomegranate

It’s the season of pomegranates! There are so many health benefits to eating pomegranates as they are packed full of antioxidants, vitamin C, fiber and more. The downfall of eating fresh pomegranates is how messy they can be if you don’t know how to open them right.

I have learned this along the way. When my kids were little, I still remember them eating pomegranates in the yard and pretending they were bleeding everywhere.

We do have a few pomegranate trees and just like most fruits, when they are ready, we get an abundance all at once.

So first, I’ll talk about how to open them and then we’ll look at how to store them.

Start off by slicing the outside of the pomegranate. Now there's two ways to do this. Go ahead and cut in all the way in half if you do the smacking with the end of a wooden spoon method. Some like this method. Taking the back of the spoon and tapping on the outside of the uncut side to smack the seeds out. It works, but I find it to be more work and messier.

This is how I like to cut mine. You only slice the outside of the pomegranate about 1/4 inch through and do this so it just cut the pomegranate outside and it magically will naturally open like this when you pull it apart:

Then you take these pieces and put them in a bowl of water and the seeds come out so beyond easy, your fingers don't turn pink because your hand is in water and then automatically the seeds sink to the bottom and the white parts float to the top. Natural separation!

Skim the top of the bowl with a spoon to get all the pieces off the top and discard them. Then you simply drain and you're ready to go. Super simple. The photo is my old strainer, but if you need one yourself, I love these two on amazon:

I prefer to eat my pomegranate this way because it doesn't involve a big mess and it makes it easy to actually use the seeds. This way I can scoop them into my dish rather than eating them off the mesocarp. (that's what the white stuff inside of the pomegranate is technically called) The actual red see with its yummy tart juices and seed are called the arils (edible seed) and that's where the good nutrients are.

I like to use pomegranates in different dishes. My two favorites are adding them to a fall salad, as well as using them in my breakfast on top of Greek yogurt with some frozen blueberries and honey.

Now after you've done the work of getting the seeds out, your left with a bowl of pomegranate seeds that you need to use up pretty quickly so they don’t go bad. Being that I open many pomegranates in the same day to get a big bowl of the seeds, I use Ziploc bags to store the seeds in the freezer so I can use them throughout the year. Plus, by spending some time all at once, I only go through the mess one time versus many times.

So there you have it, it really isn’t that hard to open a pomegranate. If you do it the wrong way though, not only are they super messy, but they do stain. Take it from me, I might have been there, and I definitely know that.

Xo,

Mama