When I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago, I saw my longtime friend Elise , who arrived with a small bag of homemade chocolate biscotti, and some fruit from her garden. Among those fruits was a pomegranate, and it took me a while to get over it. As I grew up in Paris, the pomegranate remains for me an ultra exotic fruit, which I vaguely imagine growing in some tropical forest with multicolored birds and monkeys jumping from one tree to another — the kind of fruit which I consume moderately, because of the carbon footprint. How to cut a pomegranate?
And yet I love it. I like to bite into the little seeds that burst with a tangy juice, and I like to sprinkle them on stewed vegetables and salads, especially this avocado and cilantro kale salad that I’ve made several times in San Francisco.
How to cut a pomegranate: Four simple steps
So I received this local pomegranate with unfeigned joy, and just as I was about to cut it to extract the seeds — standing in front of Heidi ‘s beautiful marble countertop — I decided to take a few photos to give you the technique if you don ‘t practice grenade pinning (I couldn’t not do it).
I have just heard of a technique which consists of beating the pomegranate with a wooden spoon and I will try it on the next occasion, even if I am not convinced that it saves that much time. (And then, what aggressiveness!)
Before you begin, put on an apron and roll up your sleeves. Pomegranate juice is a sublime color, certainly, but do you want to sprinkle it on your clothes?
1. With a sharp knife, cut the top and bottom of the fruit, just to reveal the seeds. Then make four vertical slashes all around the fruit, cutting through the full thickness of the rind but stopping just when you reach the seeds.
2. Put the pomegranate in a deep bowl filled with water and separate it into four quarters under water (this prevents the juice from squirting out).
3. Still working with your hands in the water, loosen the seeds from the spongy membrane, and set aside the inedible parts as you go. The pieces of membrane will float to the surface while the seeds will sink to the bottom.
4. There you go! Take the seeds from the bottom of the bowl, and drain them between your fingers, removing any small bits of recalcitrant membrane.
A medium-sized pomegranate weighing about 260 grams yields about 150 grams of seeds, or 240 ml in volume. These seeds freeze very well, and thaw quickly when placed in a bowl of water.
This is the small guide I have given to you that how to cut a pomegranate. I hope you would understand. Enjoy eating pomegranates.
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