Ingredient

Pomegranate

A pomegranate is a leathery shell packed with hundreds of seeds, each wrapped in a translucent sac of sharp-sweet juice. Getting them out is the whole obstacle, and the two useful methods are both quick once you know them.

Getting the seeds out — the water method

The cleanest way, and it exploits a difference in density.

1. Score the pomegranate around its middle, cutting only through the leathery skin rather than into the seeds.
2. Pull it apart into two halves with your thumbs.
3. Submerge a half in a large bowl of cold water and work the seeds out with your fingers under the surface.
4. The seeds sink and the white pith floats. Skim the pith off the top and pour the rest through a sieve.
5. No juice sprays anywhere, because everything happens underwater. This is the whole reason for the bowl.

The faster method — the spoon

Messier, quicker, and fine if you are not wearing white.

1. Halve the pomegranate across its equator.
2. Hold a half cut side down over a bowl, spread across your fingers so the seeds have somewhere to fall through.
3. Hit the back of the skin firmly and repeatedly with a wooden spoon.
4. The seeds drop through your fingers into the bowl. Squeeze and flex the shell as you go to loosen the stubborn ones.
5. Pick out any pale pith that came with them.

How to use the seeds

They are sweet, sharp and crunchy, and they are almost always doing one of two jobs: contrast or acidity.

• Scattered over roasted vegetables — aubergine, squash, cauliflower, carrots. The sweet-sour pop against soft caramelised vegetable is the single most reliable use.
• In a herb salad — fattoush, tabbouleh, or any parsley-heavy salad.
• On hummus, labneh or yoghurt, with olive oil and herbs.
• With grilled and roasted meat, especially lamb and chicken.
• In a grain salad — freekeh, bulgur, couscous, rice — where they lift an otherwise heavy dish.
• On a dessert — with yoghurt, rosewater, pistachios, or over ice cream.
• Juiced. The seeds pressed give the juice, and it is the base of grenadine.

Pomegranate molasses

Pomegranate juice boiled down to a thick, dark, intensely sour-sweet syrup. It is one of the most useful bottles in Middle Eastern cooking and it does something no other ingredient quite does: it delivers acidity and sweetness and a deep fruity body at the same time.

Use it where a dish needs sharpening but lemon would be too thin and one-dimensional. In dressings, whisked with olive oil. In marinades for lamb and chicken, where its sugar also helps browning. Drizzled over roasted vegetables or grilled meat at the end. In muhammara, the roasted pepper and walnut dip, where it is essential. In stews like fesenjan, the Persian walnut and pomegranate dish.

Check the label. Good pomegranate molasses is pomegranate juice and nothing else, or juice with a little sugar. Cheaper versions bulk it out with glucose syrup and colour and taste flatly sweet rather than sour.

Common questions