How to Cut Open a Pomegranate

Sharing is caring!

Tired of having hands covered in red juice?  Find out how to cut open a pomegranate the easy way!

I’ve always loved pomegranates, but as a kid I remember it being such a hassle to cut open a pomegranate to get out the seeds.  Without fail, we ended up with hands covered in red juice, and more than half of the arils would be broken open.  It just wasn’t an easy process.

Recently, I wanted to make a Winter Fruit Salad, and I thought that having pomegranate in it would be fun.  So set out to figure out how to crack a pomegranate the correct way– the way that wouldn’t result in a huge mess.

And it turns out it’s actually really easy, if you know what you’re doing.

I’m pretty sure we always just chopped the pomegranate in half.  And that’s not the best way to cut open a pomegranate.

If you look at the pomegranate from the top, you’ll see that there are several ridges (ours had 6).  A pomegranate is actually a sectional fruit, sort of like an orange or a grapefruit.

Using a knife, score down the edge of each of these sections.

Now, break open the pomegranate.  It should break into sections fairly easily.  If it doesn’t break easily, score a bit deeper.

Once you have the separate sections, you’ll be able to see that each section of arils comes off of a center piece.

Fill a bowl about halfway with water.  Put one section in the water at a time, and gently rub at the arils.  They should come off pretty easily into the water.

Using water helps to not breaks the arils open.  I think I only broke maybe 2 of them out of the whole pomegranate (which is a huge improvement over the way we did it as a kid!).

The arils will sink to the bottom, and the membrane will float on the top.

Once you’ve gotten all of the arils off of the pomegranate, simply skim the membranes off the top of the water, drain off the water, and you’ve got a bowl of pomegranates to eat!

Who knew it was so simple to cut open a pomegranate?  I was so excited about it, and I know that I’ll eat many more pomegranates now that it isn’t such a chore!

Here are some delicious recipes you can use your pomegranates to make:

Pomegranate Upside-down Cake

Winter Fruit Salad

Click here to pin this post!