Assessment: Not as Intimidating as It Seems – Like a Guy Who’s Good-Looking, but Not Very Smart

What You Should Know About Buying Pomegranates:

Pomegranates are in season from October through January. When choosing a pomegranate, look for one that is heavy for its size. Heavy = juicy

Dismantling a Pomegranate:

Pomegranates are filled with tiny, little seeds. Those seeds, or arils, are surrounded by a spongy membrane. Getting a pomegranate ready to eat is messy. Below are some photos of my recent attempt at pomegranate dismantling. Here’s how I did it:

First, I sliced off a “cheek” of the pomegranate to see what I was dealing with. You can see there are a lot of arils inside surrounded by a spongy membrane that looked a little like honeycomb. Each aril sits in a crevice.

I placed a strainer over a bowl in my sink to catch the juices and then, got to work digging the arils out with my fingers. The arils are filled with juice, so I ended up squirting myself often. Having a deep sink comes in very handy here.

After getting through one cheek, I chopped off another and continued to pull out arils. The remaining core was easy to break apart with my fingers, and after a while, there was no method to my madness, just a lot of  prying. This is what I ended up with.

Uses:

• Sprinkle arils into a salad as a garnish
• Snack on the arils
• Use the juice to make sauces, vinagrettes or a pomegranate balsamic reduction

Assessment: While not complicated, it was pretty time-consuming. I’m not the most patient person and will probably forgo this experiment in the future. Unless I have amnesia. Which has happened before. I think.  If you’re short on time, buy POM juice instead. My grocery store carries it in the deli section near the prepackaged lettuce.