Pomegranate Magic
By Tayler Cox
If I had to choose one food to represent the meaning of delayed gratification, it would be the pomegranate. A disproportionate amount of time is spent opening and prying the fruit from the sticky, bitter white interior for the enjoyment of eating just one tart seed at a time. No longer! Just in time for pomegranate season, introducing the procedure that shall hitherto be referred to as “the magic pomegranate paddle method.” Thanks to Justin for sharing the idea with me. The inspiration came from this youtube video, but for those who can’t access, a recap below.
Step 1: Cut the pomegranate in half along the “equator”, so that flowering end is left intact. Don’t cut the flowering part in half! It sometimes contains bugs and pollen that will fall into your bowl if you do. You can put some tape over it to make sure nothing unpleasant gets shaken out. Note, in the video he just scores the outer edge and then twists to open so he doesn’t cut through any of the seeds, but if you feeling lazy you can just cut directly in half.
Step 2: Turning the pomegranate at a 45 degree angel in your hand and holding the bottom over a bowl, slap around the edges with the paddle (aka spatula) using brisk strokes.
Bad pomegranate!
Step 3: Dig out remaining pomegranate seeds that haven’t yet been dislodged, and eat!
I always wondered how they made pomegranate juice when pomegranate seed extraction seemed so slow and labor intensive. At first I was picturing thousands of automated paddles on an assembly line in a juice factory, but according to Pom (CA pomegranate juice brand) it is not quite that exciting (their “from tree to factory” video here).
2012-11-27 06:02:42
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