This Sunday I spent part of the afternoon helping a friend make pomegranate jelly. It was an interesting experience and we had a lot of fun working together.

We started by collecting some pomegranates from a tree. Some of the pomegranates on the tree had already split open, but we were able to get enough for our batch of jelly.

Here you see the pomegranates that we picked. They may not look the best on the outside, but wait until you see what they look like on the inside.

To juice the pomegranates we first had to remove the seeds. To do this we started by cutting the pomegranates in half. Don’t they look beautiful?

Here I am taking a short break from removing the seeds to show off one of the pomegranates. I had to wear an apron to keep my shirt clean, and even so got some juice on me. Luckily spot treatment and washing the shirt right away were successful in getting out the juice.

To get the seeds out you use a wooden spoon to whack around the peel of the pomegranate and let the seeds fall into your hand and then into the bowl. This gets out most of the seeds and you can clean out the last ones with your fingers.

The seeds are really pretty with the fleshy seedcoat or sarcotesta that they are encased with. The pomegranate juice comes from the sarcotesta.

Here I am using a hand press to juice the seeds. This was a nice little press as you put the seeds in and the juice collects in the bottom of the press. You then pour the juice into a measuring bowl.

Here is a better view of the press along with both the remnants of the seeds and the bowl of pomegranate juice.

For the jelly we needed four cups of pomegranate juice. We had just enough, and believe me it was some hard work for just a quart of juice.

The juice was then poured into a stock pot along with 7.5 cups of sugar, 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and 1/2 teaspoon of butter. The juice was brought to a rolling boil and then two pouches of fruit pectin were added and boiled for just one minute.

Jars were then filled with the jelly and lids and rings that had been boiled were used to close them up.

The jelly is really delicious and I look forward to eating some pomegranate jelly and peanut butter sandwiches.

Have you tasted pomegranate jelly?

Steven