No one can resist the tempting flavor and color of tropical fruits in the summer. Sitting under a palm, enjoying the waves breezing with a fresh, delicious citrus fruit juice like mango in hand sounds magnificent, right?
There are many kinds of tropical fruits out there, but there is one unique fruit that you may have known about before. Once you learn about it, you will love it for sure, and that is pomegranate.
What does pomegranate taste like? And what is special about this fruit? Everything will be explained in this article!
What Is A Pomegranate?
Pomegranate is one of the most exotic tropical fruits.
The first location where pomegranate appears is the region of Spanish America. With the help of Spanish settlers in America in 1769, pomegranates made their way to the US and have remained since then. Then hundred years after, pomegranates have appeared in Indian, Asian, Turkish, Mexican dishes as a side-dish garnishment or as ingredients for baking, cooking, making cocktails, wine, smoothies, etc. Pomegranates season is summer, that’s why it is a summer fruit.
Compared to other pollo tropical fruits, pomegranates are more expensive and seasonal, making it uneasy about purchasing and enjoying. That’s what makes pomegranate special, and we will continue exploring it by answering what pomegranate looks like and what pomegranate tastes like.
What Do Pomegranates Look Like?
What does a pomegranate look like, you may ask? Pomegranate is a red, round fruit with smooth, bright skin and a root on top of its head. When opening a pomegranate, you will see many bright red seeds with corn-shaped filling up the white core.
These seeds are called arils, they have the size of kernels and contain sweet pomegranate juice, and they are the only edible part of this whole big fruit. Each pomegranate contains hundreds of arils, and they can be pulled out from the pomegranate to eat alone or make juice.
What Does Pomegranate Taste Like?
So, what do pomegranates taste like? Are pomegranates sweet? In general, pomegranate taste is typically sweet and tart like any other citrus fruit.
The lightly sweet flavor of the pomegranate can be described as familiar to cranberries or grapes, but it can be bold if you use its extract right away.
The powerfully sweet pomegranate, for those characteristics, is mainly used to brighten up citrus fruit juice or add a sweet content to sauce in savory dishes.
What about the question: “What do pomegranate seeds taste like?” Well, the arils’ flavor is sweet with a light sour perfume. The arils’ crunchiness can contrast to lightweight dishes like soup or salad to make the tasty experience more flavorful.
However, you can only determine what pomegranate tastes like depending on whether the fruit is ripe or unripe. In our experience, ripe pomegranates are edible because they are sweet and crunchy, but sometimes you may wonder, “Why is my pomegranate sour?” In that case, you can come across sour, itchy-flavored pomegranates, which are quite similar to ripe cherries.
To use these sour ripe pomegranates, you can combine them with a salty component to balance the flavor and remove the tartness. Although the flavor of sour pomegranate may not be to your expectation, you can always alter the flavor when adding it to drinks by adding more sugar or giving it some lemon, honey extract, etc.
On the other hand, unripe pomegranates are so sour and bitter that they are almost inedible. Digesting unripe pomegranates can be harmful to your health, so if you see a pomegranate that has an odd color or weird taste, it might not be ripe yet.
An unripe or spoiled pomegranate will give off a like-alcohol sense, which you can easily detect once you get your hands on the fruit. If you accidentally eat a bad pomegranate, it is not the deadliest thing, but it is surely something we would not recommend.
Are Pomegranates Nutritious?
Pomegranates are one of the most beneficial in nutrition citrus fruits that you can find on the market. Only one pomegranate weighing about 150g has had a very impressive nutritional profile:
- Fiber – 12%
- Vitamin K – 36%
- Potassium – 12%
- Folate – 16%
- Vitamin C – 30%
Other than these measurable healthy components, pomegranates also exclusively include two mineral substances that proved beneficial to human health: Punicalagins and Punicic Acid.
Punicalagins are extremely rare antioxidants found in green tea and red wine only, which offers human health a powerful source of healthy antioxidants in reducing inflammatory activity in the digestive tract. At the same time, punicic acid helps improve the human immune system with potent biological effects.
The other great nutritional value that pomegranates offer are:
Pomegranates help fight cancer
With great antioxidants provided by Punicalagins and Punicic Acid, eating pomegranate in a routine can help reduce the risk of having cancer in both males and females and slow cancer cells development and reproduction in one’s system.
Pomegranate has positive effects on reducing prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in females. Although more research needs to be made to confirm the true benefits of pomegranate in terms of health, cancer patients are recommended to prepare pomegranate digest pomegranate regularly.
Pomegranates help lower blood pressure and lower the risk of having heart disease.
High blood pressure is one of the common diseases in the world. The more high blood pressure you are enduring, the higher chance you will get heart diseases in the future.
Luckily, eating pomegranates can lower the possibility of having both of these risky situations. People with significantly high blood pressure measures can see the decrease in result by consuming pomegranate juice daily for two weeks straight, thanks to the punicic acid extract in this wonderful fruit.
Pomegranate juice has also been proved to protect LDL cholesterol particles from being oxidized, which is one of the key points to minimizing heart diseases. By neutralizing the blood pressure, the risk of having a heart attack falls too.
If you have trouble with blood pressure, try to take in pomegranate juice every day for half a month, and you can see the impactful result.
How Do I Cook With Pomegranates?
So, the question is: “What can you do with pomegranates?” Cooking with pomegranates can be diversifiable, thanks to their sweet and crunchy characteristics. There are many things to do with pomegranate seeds, such as implementing pomegranates into your dishes: one is to use as garnishes or toppings in dishes, and two is to use in drinks.
You can extract arils from pomegranate with garnish, wash them thoroughly, and put them in a salad, soup, desserts as toppings and garnishes.
Overall, pomegranates will give off a sweet and tropical extract to be perfect with green vegetables or dishes containing sweet ingredients. The most popular dishes that pomegranates’ arils can combine with our cereal, oatmeal, salad, yogurt, yogurt parfait, ice cream, etc.
It is up to your dining choice to decide whether pomegranates are suitable for that dish or not.
With drinks, it is easy. You can extract the juice out from the arils, add a bit of water and lemon to create a beautiful pomegranate juice. Take that extract to create a stunning cocktail or combine it in cranberry juice detox for an extra-berry flavor healthy drink.
How Do I Store Pomegranates?
You can choose to keep pomegranates at room temperature or in the fridge.
- If you consume pomegranates shortly, they can stay in great shape at room temperature as long as you keep them away from direct sunlight in a non-humid area. They will stay fresh for at least three days.
- If you want to keep pomegranates longer, keep them wrapped carefully with plastic wrap or kept in air-tight containers, and they will last for up to 2 months.
Conclusion
And that’s all we can answer on the question: “What does pomegranate taste like?” After this article, we hope you can enjoy more pomegranate dishes and try to bring them into your daily eating routine for their added nutritional value.
