This week I have experimented with drying pomegranate seeds. I used two different techniques; drying in the oven and drying at room temperature. Before diving into this, the one thing I learned is patience. But more about that later! The first thing is to choose your Pomegranate. Obviously it should look pretty and should not be mushy when pressing it from the outside. It seems like Rory has approved this Pomegranate.
Next is to open your pomegranate to see your beautiful seedy fruit. Some people have better, more efficient ways of getting your seeds out but I enjoy taking the seeds out one by one over the span of an hour as a source of stress relief ~wink~.
I split my seeds on two different cookie sheets to have one dried at room temperature and one in the oven. Both were evenly spread on the sheets. The room temperature pan is straight forward. Just sit it somewhere safe (and away from Rory), flip the pomegranates every 2 days for an even dry. This process still is not finished and I am on the fifth day.
The oven dried pomegranates require you to understand your oven (face palm to forehead). I have an old small oven with a dial starting at “warm” with the next number being 200 degrees. Well I wanted to put the oven on 150 degrees so I put it on warm. That’s gotta be it right; right? Well 6 hours later I realized their’s a line for 150 degrees so I probably had the oven on 100 degrees that whole time. Once I got the correct temperature going, the drying worked a bit better. I made sure to “flip” the pomegranate seeds every 2 hours. And by flip I mean– I attempted to flip the first two times and failed, so the rest of the time I just moved the seeds around with a spatula. Ta da!
For me I left the pomegranate in the oven for 9 hours (if I had it on 150 degrees the whole time it may have only taken 6-8 hours). It seems dry. But I’ve never done this before and don’t trust myself. So I left it out for 24 hours to dry longer. Then put it back in the oven for another hour. After cooling for 30 minutes I put it in a glass jar for a few days to see if any condensation got on the glass. If any moisture goes on the sides, it’s not completely dry so it needs to go back in the oven. I’ll be keeping an eye on the pomegranates over the next few weeks to make sure it’s fully dry and no mold shows up. If all is well I will move them to an airtight container.
Rory, Tea & Me 