Pomegranates are the jewels of winter. Their glistening, juicy, bright red seeds are absolutely loaded with vitamins, minerals, and precious anthocyanins. Anthocyanins are part of the flavonoid family that efficiently helps prevent internal inflammation and oxidative stress.

In the Northern Hemisphere, pomegranates are in season from September to November, but their long shelf life means you can usually find them in grocery stores until January. You can find pomegranate juice year-round, though.

If you’re familiar with this fruit, then you know you don’t eat the skin. The pomegranate must be peeled, and then the seeds removed from the fibrous membranes before eating. It’s not an easy job and there have been lots of articles written on so-called easy ways to de-seed the pomegranate. I think if you can wrap your mind around the fact that it’s just going to take some time to get to the seeds, then it’s doable.

The preferred way to do this is to submerge the fruit in a bowl of water and just start picking away. Simply put, there’s no shortcut to removing the seeds.

Once you do get these flavor-loaded seeds extracted, be sure to refrigerate them until time for use. And there are many ways to use them. Besides just snacking on them, they’re always good tossed into salads. They’re delicious when mixed into yogurt or cooked oatmeal. And they make a pretty and yummy dessert when folded into tapioca pudding.

Speaking of desserts, we’re seeing more and more recipes now calling for tarts, pies, and cakes made using pomegranate seeds. And then there’s pomegranate sauce. You simply cook the seeds down with sugar or honey to make a pomegranate reduction or syrup for use in savory dishes like roasted meats. Or you can use it to glaze cheesecakes, muffins, or use it as a pancake syrup.

My favorite way to use pomegranate seeds is to blend them in my Vitamix. They make a healthy and tasty addition to my green smoothies.

I’ll close with one last thought on how to keep this jewel of winter around all year long. If you can make yourself de-seed several at a time, and if you have high-powered blender, then blend them with a little orange juice and pour this blend into ice cube trays.

Freeze the juice; once solid, remove the cubes to an airtight container or plastic zippered freezer bag and return them to the freezer. Now you’ll have pomegranate juice to use in all sorts of ways, long after our short pomegranate season is over!

    Alice Osborne
    Weekly Newsletter Contributor since 2006
    Email the author! alice@dvo.com