Pomegranates
Apr 2nd, 2008 by satisfyte
Pomegranates are one of those weird foods that are insanely rewarding to pick apart, but many people aren’t even aware of them. Due to the whole recent antioxidant craze, poms have gotten a lot more recognition. You may have taken a sw
ig of the ever-tangy Pom Wonderful beverage. I tried it once…yergh. But to each his own! We have more important pomegranate manifestations to address.
In case you haven’t seen an actual pomegranate before, this is what they look like. –>
Fairly ordinary and unassuming, no? Kind of like a pink onion or an apple with a tiny skirt on. For someone who’s never broken a pomegranate open, the experience could be shocking. I had never witnessed a pomegranate until my freshman year of college. I was in this freshman seminar team-building philosophy class, and we had tea and meditated and all of that hippie stuff. Sadly for me, I didn’t like unsweetened tea, and I would have rather been meditating in front of MarioKart64, but what are you going to do?
Anyway, let’s move past the outward appearance and delve into the satisfying wonders contained in the juicy treasure chest known as the pomegranate. Pomegranates are so strange that they often come with their own little tag with instructions. Basically, you get some cold water running, a colander, and you bust the thing open! Inside the pomegranate, you will find a network of fruit beads. I’m not kidding. They’re seriously like, these little burgundy nuggets that resemble corn kernels, or if you’d rather think of them this way like I do, precious gemstones. Some will spill out in an avalanche of satisfaction when you bust the fruit open, and the rest have their own satisfying process to follow - picking them out.
Much like the satisfaction that comes from extracting a blemish, or picking a horse’s hoof (I have never done this, but I have heard of its wonders), freeing the remaining clusters of pom beads from their web-like structure is wicked satisfying. They stick, but aren’t so stuck that you break them and get juice under your nails. You simply tear out a chunk of the membrane (it’s kind of spongy like squash), run your finger along the kernels, and they pop right out! You can sometimes scoop a whole bunch at once, and discard the membrane into the trash.
By the end of it, you have a colander full of pomegranate chunks. Each one is like its own little world. They’re shiny and kind of translucent, completely self-contained mini-fruits. Their flavor to me is sort of in between a grape, a tomato, and a berry of some kind. Eating a pomegranate is yet another satisfying aspect of the full Pom Experience. You just pop the little bits into your mouth, and as you bite down, they literally explode into your mouth with juice and a distinct seed-like crunch.
Awesome.
Wicked Satisfying Trivia: Did you know that Grenadine syrup is actually made from pomegranates?! A big fan of the Shirley Temple, I always thought it was cherry, but our dear culinary god Alton Brown has since taught me otherwise. Hm. Come to think of it, Alton Brown just might be wicked satisfying all on his own.
And apparently you can buy an entire pomegranate tree on Amazon… (wtf?!)
Have you ever had a pomegranate? What other fruits do you find satisfying? Peeling apart a Clementine? Nectarines?
(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)
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