If you want the seeds whole, don't slice a pomegranate in half through the middle. A knife that goes straight through cuts a ring of seeds open and floods the board with juice. Cut off the crown, score the skin along the ridges, pull the fruit apart with your hands, then pick the seeds out in a bowl of water. The seeds sink, the white pith floats, and nothing gets on your shirt.
The rest of this guide covers picking a good one, a faster method for when you don't care about a few broken seeds, what to eat and what to leave, and how long the fruit and the seeds keep.
What you're actually cutting into
A pomegranate is a leathery rind around a set of chambers, each one packed with seeds and walled off by a thin, papery white membrane. The part you eat is the aril: a juicy red sac with one small seed in the middle. Purdue University's horticulture reference describes each sac as holding "one white or red, angular, soft or hard seed."
The chambers are the whole trick. If you cut along the walls between them, the arils stay whole. If you cut across them, you burst a row of arils with every stroke.
How to pick a ripe one
The UC Master Food Preservers of Sonoma County (University of California, 2025-04-07) give three checks, and they are easy to do in a store:
- Shape: an unripe pomegranate is round. As the arils swell, they push flat faces into the skin, so a ripe one looks like a rounded square.
- Weight: it should feel heavy for its size. Heavy means full of juice.
- Colour: bright, whatever the variety. Dull, faded skin can mean it is past its best, and so can soft spots.
In US stores they are mostly available from October through December, according to NC State Extension.
How to cut and open a pomegranate: the score-and-pull method
This is the method that keeps the most arils whole. You need a small sharp knife, a board, and a large bowl of cold water.
- Cut off the crown. Slice a thin cap off the flower end, the end with the little spiky crown. Go shallow, just through the rind. You'll see the tops of the chambers and the white walls between them.
- Find the ridges. Look at the white lines on the exposed top. There are usually five or six. Each one is a wall.
- Score the skin along each wall. Run the knife from the top down the side of the fruit toward the base, following each white line. Cut only through the red rind, not into the fruit.
- Pull it apart. Push your thumbs into the centre from the top and pull. The fruit opens along the scores into sections, like an orange.
- Seed it under water. Drop the sections into the bowl of water. Working below the surface, bend each section back and push the arils off the membrane with your thumbs.
- Skim and drain. The arils sink. The pith and membrane float. Scoop the floating bits off the top, then pour the arils into a sieve.
- Dry them. Spread them on a clean tea towel or paper towel for a few minutes before storing or serving.
Working under water matters for more than tidiness. The juice spurts when an aril bursts, and Utah State University Extension warns that "the deep red stain is difficult to remove." Under water, the spurt goes into the bowl. Wear an apron anyway, and use a plastic or glass board if your wooden one is pale.
The fast method: halve and tap
When the arils are going into something where a few broken ones don't matter, like juice or a cooked sauce, this is quicker.
- Cut the pomegranate in half around its middle, across the chambers.
- Hold one half cut side down in your palm, fingers slightly spread, over a deep bowl.
- Hit the rind hard with the back of a wooden spoon. Keep going around the whole half. The arils drop through your fingers into the bowl.
- Pick out any bits of membrane that fall in with them.
You lose more arils to the knife and the juice goes further, so do it in a deep bowl in the sink. For arils you want to scatter over a finished dish, use the score-and-pull method.
Which method to use
- Score and pull keeps the arils whole and loses the least juice, because the only knife work is through the rind. Use it when the seeds are going on top of a dish or into a bowl to eat as they are.
- Halve and tap gets through several fruit quicker, at the cost of more broken arils and more splatter. Use it when the seeds are going to be juiced, blended or cooked into a sauce.
Either way, the rule that matters is the same: cut the rind, not the fruit, and do the messy part over a bowl.
How to eat a pomegranate
Eat the arils, seed and all. The seed inside is small and edible. Depending on the variety it is soft or has a bit of crunch.
Leave the rest. The rind and the white membrane are not something you eat. The membrane is bitter and has a papery texture, which is why picking it out of the arils is worth the extra minute.
Straight from the bowl with a spoon is a perfectly good way to eat them. Beyond that, arils are a finishing ingredient. They go on at the end, never cooked, because what you want is the burst of sour-sweet juice and the colour:
- Scattered over fattet musakhan, which already calls for pomegranate seeds as a garnish with the pine nuts and parsley.
- On a mezze platter, over hummus or labneh with olive oil, where the sharp note cuts through the creamy dips.
- Over a green salad or a bowl of yoghurt.
The whole fruit has its own place on the table too. On Yaldā, also called Chella, the gathering held on the last night of autumn in Iran and Afghanistan, the table is set with "red fruits such as pomegranates, watermelons, beetroots, jujube and grapes to symbolize warmth," according to UNESCO, which added the tradition to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2022. The last night of autumn falls inside the October to December pomegranate season.
Pomegranate seeds, pomegranate juice and pomegranate molasses
These are three different things in a recipe, and swapping one for another doesn't work.
Seeds are the fresh arils, for texture and colour on top of a dish.
Juice comes from pressing the arils. Utah State says one large pomegranate gives between a quarter and a half cup. You can push halves over a citrus reamer, or pulse the arils briefly and strain out the seeds.
Pomegranate molasses is juice cooked down to a thick, sour, dark syrup. It is a pantry ingredient, used by the spoonful, and it does a completely different job to fresh seeds. It goes into the dressing for fattoush, and it goes into the onion mixture for fattet musakhan. The pantry staples guide has more on it, including keeping an opened bottle in the fridge.
Expect it to be sharp before it is sweet. The Nosher at My Jewish Learning (2021-08-03) describes it as "thick and slightly sweet, with cheek-puckering tartness", and names three dishes that lean on it: fesenjan, a Persian chicken stew; muhammara, a red pepper spread from Syria; and batinjan bil rumman, a Lebanese pairing of eggplant and pomegranate. The same piece puts it with lamb, where the sourness balances the richness of the meat, and whisked into salad dressings.
It is also easy to make. Bring 32 oz (about 4 cups) of pomegranate juice with no added sweeteners to a simmer and keep it there for about an hour, until it coats the back of a spoon. That is the method in the same Nosher article, which says it keeps in the fridge for months.
How to store pomegranates
Storage times below are from the UC Master Food Preservers guide (2025-04-07) and Utah State University Extension, checked 2026-09-14.
A whole pomegranate keeps one to two weeks at room temperature and about two months in the fridge. Leave it uncut until the day you use it, and once you cut one, seed the whole fruit and store the arils.
Seeds in the fridge: Utah State gives fresh arils or juice up to five days in the fridge. The UC guide gives five to seven. Store them dry, in a covered container, and throw them out if they turn mushy or smell fermented.
Seeds in the freezer: spread dry arils in a single layer on a tray lined with parchment so they don't freeze into one lump. Freeze until solid, then move them to a freezer bag or airtight container. Both university guides say to use them within a year.
Thawed arils are softer and weep juice, because ice breaks the cells, the same reason frozen herbs go limp (the fresh herbs guide covers that). So use frozen arils for juice, smoothies or sauces, or scatter them straight from frozen onto a dish so they thaw on the plate.
More Middle Eastern cooking, including the dishes above, is in the Middle Eastern recipes hub.
