Don't cut it in the middle.
No, no!
G’day guys, it's Thanh the Fruit Nerd.
Now it's pomegranate season.
Now this tree has a lot of ripe and unripe fruits,
and I'm going to teach you how to pick
the most ripe and juicy pomegranate at the shops.
But also, if you find pomegranates
slightly tedious to work through and get all the arils out,
I'm also going to teach you a very simple way
that's almost mess-free and you get all the arils out
in less than 30 seconds.
These pomegranates here are still maturing on the tree.
Now, the first thing you might say
is that it's a little bit green.
Now, even though colour is important
in showing maturity,
the shape is even more important
because, as you can see,
it's still growing and it's quite circular, right?
But if we go around the corner, let's go and have a look
for some more ripe, more plump ones.
Now you can see this one right here
is starting to really get
an angle on each of, you could say, the edges
and that angular shape is showing that the fruit
is really plumping up.
It's really drawing in a lot of moisture from the tree
and it's becoming more mature, more sweet and more juicy.
And you can tell that it's more juicy because it's heavier
and it hangs down low on the tree
and it's really pulling down the weight of the branch.
So what you want to look for in
the store is one that's really heavy
because that represents juiciness,
and also the angular shape,
which represents maturity and maturity is sweetness.
So those two factors are more important than colour
because it might still be green and be very sweet and juicy.
Now, guys,
if you know somebody who cuts a pomegranate like this, well,
let them know that they're making
their lives hard for themselves because it's really hard
to extract all of these arils which are stuck in between
all these segment walls.
Like, just to remove this,
it's really hard.
Let me teach you a much easier way to get all the arils out.
Now, the first thing
I like to do is use some gloves because the pomegranate arils
do stain
and you get caught red-handed.
The anatomy of a pomegranate is really important.
So what we want to do is where these ridgelines end
and it's quite angular,
we want to make an incision and end on that corner
because what we want to do is we want
to utilise these ridges later.
But for now, we're going to cut all of these corners,
where the ridgelines are.
Now, as soon as you cut all those lines,
simply push it.
Put your finger into the end of the blossom
and slowly kind of wriggle it a bit and you'll see
where it weakens up.
And once you've got a hold of it,
you just
pull off the top.
Once you remove the top off, we're going to make an incision
and score along these ridgelines,
because what's under these ridgelines
is actually the segment walls in here.
As you can see, that's the core thread.
And those segment walls,
we want to make them really easy
to remove.
So I've made all the incisions,
as you can see.
Now, when I pull them apart,
you can see here that
I'm breaking it along the lines where the segments
are separated.
And you can see the segment walls here.
But, look, once I've cut those incisions and broken it up,
all the arils become very open and available.
Now, if I compare this method
to this method,
you can see that there's a clear difference
in terms of how easy the arils are to access.
What you want to do is grab a stainless steel bowl
and a wooden spatula
and you turn the pomegranate upside down.
And in each of these segments, what you want to do...
is you want to use a spatula
this side,
you want to whack it.
And you want to hold each of the segments,
and just whack.
Now, when you look into the bowl,
you've pretty much got all the arils.
There might be one or two skin segment walls.
Just throw them out.
And you've pretty much processed
all the arils within 30 seconds.
So a much easier way
than cutting the pomegranate in half.
Now that you know how to pick a juicy and ripe pomegranate
and you know how to process it to get the arils out easy,
don't be afraid to purchase one from the store
because there's so many uses for pomegranate.
Not just for juicing or to put in a salad,
but you can use it in a dessert,
like over ice cream where it's quite sweet
and that sour tang will really add much flavour.
Or you can be just like me and eat pomegranates...
straight.
So enjoy your pomegranates this season.