Hi, I was inspired by the post recently on processing persimmons… I have just one producing tree right now but being in California (maybe?), I get 100s of pomegranates to process. Last year, I manually removed all of the arils by cutting the blossom end out, slicing along membrane lines, and whacking them on the skin side face down into a bowl. Then, I blended the arils, and manually pressed batches of the blended arils in cheesecloth for juice. I think I made about 12 x 32 oz jars of juice and froze them. Really good juice but W–O–R–K! Example:
So far this year, I haven’t processed many–have lots in my fridge and a number still on the tree. Tried using a citrus juicer, first slicing hemispherically, but you get much more astringent/bitter notes this way I suppose either from the skin and/or membrane. I have seen videos from the Middle East where I suspect this is a popular treat, and this seems to by the typical street vendor method. But, it’s not as good in my opinion as my very manual process. Example:
My method is closer to the street vendor. I cut the fruit into 4 or 8 pieces depending on size and squeeze away. It’s not very efficient in terms of extraction, but it’s quick and easy. I have never noted any astringency.
My press is a table mounted unit, with a simple lever arm. It doesn’t press straight down like the vendor’s machine in the picture, but it swings it’s plate into a small pocket. I didn’t buy it for the purpose but found it in a dusty cabinet and found that it works well enough that I’ve never thought about replacing it.
I also seed out 30-50 poms from our trees each year to use in the kitchen using the same basic technique that OP describes.
It’s interesting the claims of little to no bitterness or astringency.
While at my parents house, we tried one of those citrus juicers where you push down and the ribbed center turns to press the juice and falls through a sieve to get captured. The juice from that was quite astringent and bitter. So much so that nobody wanted to drink it. Like this:
When I tried with an old juice press off of Craigslist (what I called the street vendor method and what @Fignerd and @Melon mention), the same was detectable but at lower levels. Then I tried side by side that, and juice from the same press but having removed the outer skin. Without skin was the best variant, yet still not as good as the completely separated aril method. Also, the integrity of the hemisphere of fruit with skin removed is poor, it doesn’t stay together/leads to much less extraction with pieces falling out, etc.
I wonder if the variety of pom I have or my climate or cultural practices are also responsible for bitterness and astringency in the skin & membrane. I was told the tree is a Wonderful but was planted before we moved here.
I use the Extra Tall Zulay, that I mentioned here, I notice no real bitterness, although I usually use sweet varieties of pomegranates with it Juicing pomegranates - pombazaar.com
You can probably get a more inexpensive model at Harbor Freight and have a machinist make some plates for you. A compressor would definitely be faster and easier but much louder so if anyone gets a hydraulic jack make sure it has the connections for that. The threaded fitting and tube can get anywhere. I’m considering something like this because it can double as a press to make olive oil too. But as you mentioned about quality removing the seeds might just be the way you have to go unless you’re doing thousands of lbs.
Your post above makes sense reminds me of my chili peppers. I remove all the seeds and stems only to use the best parts and there’s no comparison to the quality anywhere.
Here’s a link to the one I use. I wouldn’t necessary suggest it’s the best for this use, but it works at the scale I need it to. I wouldn’t mind giving one of the straight hand press models a run. Or even the hydraulic plate press. That place is an hour or so from me, maybe I should check them out.
What place? Zulay Kitchen in Florida? After trying a citrus press that can press a whole half a pomegranate at a time. I don’t see myself using anything else, the only thing that is missing from the citrus press is it probably does not get as much oil from the seeds as some other juicers can.
I am sure that one day I will have some extra large pomegranates, that I would need to cut in to 3 pieces, yet still much less work, and much faster than removing the arils.
So I purchased a second hand Omega 8006 juicer. It doesn’t really solve the whole problem of juicing pomegranates without manual processing for the seeds but I just could not get trials of whole or even pealed pomegranate juice where arils had not been separated to taste how I liked. This is now a bit better than the blender and cheesecloth method, I can just feed the arils down the chute. Spent about 5 hours yesterday on a few boxes of pomegranates, including set-up and clean up. Expensive (my time) juice… about 9 quart jars. Likely another 5 or so quarts left to do
