How to Juice a Pomegranate

This post explores four different methods on how to juice a pomegranate and which is the best pomegranate juicer. Find more of my pomegranate recipes.

When you are given over 40 pomegranates to go to town with, you get to explore everything about this glorious fruit. Luckily, my family loves pomegranate in any form, whether straight up, cooked, baked or juiced.

If you ever enjoyed fresh pomegranate juice, you know it is pretty incredible. And with all these pomegranates we wanted to find out which method was the best and produced the least amount of waste.

Sometimes it requires a lot more work, sometimes short cuts are involved. So, being the adventurous types that we are, we decided to take on the task of juicing some of store bought as well as the many we have growing in our trees.

But, which way would work best?

Method 1: Juice a Pomegranate with a Juicer

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I admit that I didn’t really think this one through from the beginning. I borrowed my friend’s Jack LaLane Juicer. Hubs and I were in the market for getting a juicer and we thought we’d give it a test run with our pomegranates. We really thought it work. And it did… at first.

We seeded the pomegranate first and then put the ruby-red arils into the juicer. We got a cup of pomegranate juice before we decided to check on the filter. Those tiny pomegranate seeds could get messy and this was a borrowed juicer!

Good thing we did. The filter was clogged. We had take it apart to clean it, and we still had a lot of pomegranate arils we wanted to make into juice. This was NOT going to work. Hubs and I were disappointed.

So, the engineer that he is, he went on to Method 2.

Method 2: Juice a Pomegranate with a Ziploc Bag

Okay, it’s a crude method, but this simple project soon became a real scientific experiment. Hubs poured about half a cup of pomegranate arils into a gallon-sized Ziploc bag, sealed it and squeezed. We did get juice, but we couldn’t get all of the juice.

A lot was still stuck to the seed. So, Hubby poured the remaining seeds through a small strainer and used the back of a spoon to squeeze out the remaining juice. This was work and certainly not an efficient use of our time.

How were we going to juice these pomegranates?

Method 3: Juice a Pomegranate with a Citrus Juicer

We cut a pomegranate in half, and juiced it like we would an orange or a lemon. Not with a handheld reamer, but one with a strainer and bowl. Like the Ziploc Method, we did get juice, but we couldn’t get all the juice out.

Some arils hid in their chambers and you couldn’t quite get them out by hand squeezing the pomegranates. I had an electric citrus juicer and tried the pomegranates with that. A bit more success. There was a lot of spray action on the counter, and since pomegranate juice stains, the clean up job was a pain.

I got more juice this way, but I still had to press the seeds through a strainer to get every last drop of pomegranate juice.

Obviously there must be another way. I talked with a wonderful salesperson at my local Bed, Bath & Beyond and she told me for pomegranate juicing, you couldn’t use a conventional juicer. Duh, we figured that out pretty quickly. The filters would get ruined if we did.

We needed one those $300 bad boys, the ones that uses a spiral juicer for wheat grass to get it’s juice. Even if we did want to buy one, we couldn’t find one available in San Diego. We had to get it online.

By now, we were counting down to 2 days until our POM Party and I didn’t have any more time to spend on this experiment. I left it to the Hubs.

Method 4: Juice a Pomegranate with a Wheat Grass Spiral Juicer

We agreed that the hubs would stop by Jamba Juice on the way home and see if they would juice the 15 or so pomegranates we wanted to juice.

“We aren’t allowed to bring in outside produce,” the pimply-faced teenage Jamba Juice employee replied.

UGH.

Luckily, my hubby’s eagle-eyes spotted a sign in the back counter of the store.

“For Sale. Used Juicer. $140”

And yes, he bought it. He was very excited to show me his prize and after 5 minutes of assembling the juicer, he was pouring the lovely pomegranate arils down the juicer.

We finally got our pomegranate juice. Method 4 worked! This is the best juicer we used to juice our pomegranates. It appears to be out of stock on Amazon, so I’m assuming any spiral wheat grass juicer will work, like this one.

This juicer worked wonderfully and clean up was easy. Lots of pieces to clean, but nothing was clogged or took forever to clean up.

You do have to seed your pomegranate if you use one of these juicers. We tasted the juice after juicing a few chunks of pomegranate sections, without the outer skin and with most (but not all) of the pith removed. The resulting juice was bitter. You have to seed the pomegranate for a better tasting juice.

Experiment complete. Now for the analysis.

Do I expect you to go out and buy this expensive juicer to juice one pomegranate?

No way!

If you are going to juice one or two pomegranates, a simple citrus juicer would suffice, an electric one would work even better. But you do have to press the seeds through a strainer to get the optimal amount of juice out of the arils. Or you could do what they do in Iran where the streets are lined with pomegranate juice stands and you can get freshly juiced pomegranates fresh by using an old fashioned juice press. 

If you have a pomegranate tree or access to a pomegranate tree and every year you want to juice a dozen or more pomegranates…. THEN, I highly recommend you invest in a good juicer.

What to do with Pomegranate Juice

Pomegranate juice is so good for you, with oodles and oodles of antioxidants from the polyphenols. It has three times more antioxidants than red wine and green tea. It is also rich in Vitamin C and is a natural anti-inflammatory. So feel free to drink it straight up as is.

Pomegranate juice is also great in mixed drinks and cocktails. You use your juice to make your own pomegranate molasses. You can even make some pomegranate jelly!

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Yield: varies

How to Juice a Pomegranate

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This post explores four different methods on how to juice a pomegranate. These instructions are how to juice one or a large batch of pomegranates.

Prep Time 2 hours

Additional Time 30 minutes

Total Time 2 hours 30 minutes

Ingredients

• pomegranates

Instructions

1. Ziploc Bag Method: If you are juicing just one or two pomegranates, this is one low-tech way of doing it. Seed your pomegranate (per video instructions) and place seeds in a resealable plastic bag. Seal the bag, squeezing out air, and squeeze the seeds with your hands or roll on the counter with a rolling pin to squeeze out juice. Pour the juice into a glass or bottle and place the seeds in a small strainer over a bowl. Using a spoon, squeeze out the remaining juice.
2. Citrus Juicer Method: If you don't feel like seeding a pomegranate, you can cut it in half along the equator. Press it into a citrus juicer, the ones with a strainer and bowl. Please note, this method does splatter and pomegranate juice does stain.
3. Spiral Juicer Method: This method yields the most and best tasting juice. It works great when you are juicing a large batch of pomegranates. Seed your pomegranates (per video instructions) and place seeds in a spiral juicer. Discard seeds.

Nutrition Information:

Yield:

1

Serving Size:

1 cup
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 160Total Fat: 2gSaturated Fat: 0gCholesterol: 0mgSodium: 0mgCarbohydrates: 34gFiber: 6gSugar: 24gProtein: 2g

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