You only need 3 ingredients to make this Middles Eastern essential sauce – pomegranate molasses. Wonderful combination of tang and sweet of the molasses makes it a great dressing for salads, roasted meats and vegetables. You can even drizzle on desserts!
Why Should You Try To Make Pomegranate Molasses At Home?
- Need only 3 ingredients – fresh pomegranate juice, lemon juice and sugar.
- It’s one of the most essential ingredients in Middle Eastern Cooking.
- It’s easy to make molasses at home from scratch. Including pomegranate juice. Fresh homemade pomegranate juice takes couple of extra minutes, but soo worth it.
- Homemade molasses are fresh tasting and has a wonderful balance of tang and sweet flavors. Of course you can adjust the sweetness as per your taste.
- For convenience you can use store bought pomegranate juice to make molasses.
- Most of the bottled stuff I have tastes has this predominant bitter taste to it. I strongly believe the manufactures over blend pomegranate arils to extact the juice. This will lead to blending the bitter hard part leading to make juice very bitter.
- Homemade version has no bitterness to it (or has very mild bitter taste). When making homemade pomegranate juice, take care not to blend so much that it’s hard bitter part are blend into the juice.
- Molasses keeps good for many months refrigerated. So you can make a big batch and store it away.
- Homemade molasses can be used so many ways – using it as salad dressing (roasted Brussel sprouts tastes great with molasses drizzled on top), spoon it over roasted meat too. Don’t forget to drizzle it over desserts, it’s so good. Drizzle it on ice cream – so good!
Ingredients Needed
Below picture shows all you need to make your own molasses.
Fresh Homemade Pomegranate Juice – I always prefer homemade to store bought. If it’s easy to make and says me money, why not!
If you aren’t upto making your own fresh juice, feel free to use store bought real pomegranate juice.
Lemon Juice – Use freshly squeezed lemon juice.
Sugar – I have used ½ cup sugar. If you want sweeter molasses increase the amount of sugar to ¾ cup.
How To Make Homemade Pomegranate Molasses (With Step-By-Step Pictorial Instructions)?
This recipe uses fresh homemade pomegranate juice. Feel free to use store bought juice if you aren’t up to spending few extra minutes to make your own juice.
To make your own pomegranate juice –
- Using a paring knife dig out the crown. Remove crown and discard it.
- Score pomegranate in the middle running knife all the way around.
- Using both hands carefully tear both halves apart.
- Take each half and tear it apart into smaller sections.
- Separate the arils by prying it loose from it’s rind and collect it in a bowl.
- Collect only the ruby red arils, discard all rind.
- Now place all pomegranate arils in a juicer and pulse just enough until the red arils are broken.
- IMPORTANT NOTE: Do NOT pulse pomegranate too much that the hard white bitter parts are broken and blended into the juicy red parts. Those are bitter bits that you want to leave out and discard.
- Sieve through fine sieve mesh to separate out the bitter hard white parts collecting only the juice.
- Fresh homemade pomegranate juice is ready to be used to make molasses.
To make molasses –
- In a sauce pan pour 4 cups of pomegranate juice, 2 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice and ½ cup sugar.
- Bring juice mix to gentle boil on medium heat until sugar dissolves completely. Stir occasionally.
- Once sugar is completely dissolved, reduce heat just enough to maintain a simmer.
- Continuously stir and scrape the sides of the sauce pan and continue to cook until the molasses reduces to 1 to 1 ¼ cup.
- Dip a spoon in the molasses; if it forms a coating on the spoon, you know molasses is ready.
- Remove sauce pan from the heat and let it cool. Molasses will be runny at this point. Don’t worry. It will thicken as it cools.
- Allow molasses to cool at least for 40 minutes before transferring it into a jar.
- Store it away in air tight container refrigerated for up to 6 months.
- Use it in your favorite dish.
Pomegranate Molasses Uses
Use can use molasses in many ways:
- Use pomegranate molasses in traditional Middle Eastern cooking.
- Drizzle it over roasted chicken, lamb or beef.
- Ever tried marinating meat with molasses? It’s delicious! If you like sweet marinated meat, try use a spoon of molasses along with EVOO, salt and pepper to marinate meat. Grill or roast it. You’ll get juicy, caramelized meat, that will blow your mind away.
- Use it as dressing for your salads.
- Drizzle it over roasted Brussel sprouts.
- Spoon it over ice cream.
Useful Tips To Make The BEST Homemade Pomegranate Molasses
Making your own pomegranate juice?
Remember to separate the ruby red arils properly from the rind. Discard all rind.
Do NOT pulse pomegranate too much that the hard white bitter parts are broken and blended into the juicy red parts. Those are bitter bits that you want to leave out and discard.
Using Store Bought Juice?
Check behind the box for ingredients. Commercially sold juices are concentrate that are usually mixed in with many other stuffs.
Pick the ones that has just pomegranate, water and sugar in it(there might be added regulators and dietary fibers added to it. That should be okay). It shouldn’t contain any other fruits mixed into it.
Molasses Tastes Bitter?
The reason bitter molasses is not separating the rind from ruby red pomegranate arils properly. Another reason why your molasses tastes bitter is pulsing arils for very long.
Pulse just enough the red arils are broken down.
Adjust Sweetness –
For 4 cups of freshly made pomegranate juice, ½ cup of sugar is used. Feel free to increase or reduce the amount of sugar to adjust the sweetness.
NOTE: if using store bought pomegranate juice, you may want to reduce the sugar in the recipe. Some commercial brand juices are very sweet. Taste and adjust as needed.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Every pomegranate varies in taste. Each one has different acidity and sweetness levels. Depending on that you may want to adjust the amount of sugar used.
Don’t Burn –
If you overcook molasses it’ll burn. Maintain low heat just enough to maintain simmer and keep scraping the edges of the sauce pan regularly.
You know molasses if you get a coating on the spoon when dipped in it.
Don’t Overcook –
Beware, if you simmer too long, it will turn solid like hard candy when it cools. Remove pan from heat when molasses coats the spoon.
You can drizzle pomegranate molasses in these dishes:
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Homemade Pomegranate Molasses
Ingredients
- 4 cups pomegranate juice fresh juice extracted at home
- 2 tablespoon lemon juice freshly squeezed
- ½ cup granulate sugar
Instructions
- This recipe uses fresh homemade pomegranate juice. Feel free to use store bought juice if you aren’t up to spending few extra minutes to make your own juice.
To make your own pomegranate juice –
- Using a paring knife dig out the crown. Remove crown and discard it.
- Score pomegranate in the middle running knife all the way around.
- Using both hands carefully tear both halves apart.
- Take each half and tear it apart into smaller sections.
- Separate the arils by prying it loose from it’s rind and collect it in a bowl.
- Collect only the ruby red arils, discard all rind.
- Now place all pomegranate arils in a juicer and pulse just enough until the red arils are broken.IMPORTANT NOTE: Do NOT pulse pomegranate too much that the hard white bitter parts are broken and blended into the juicy red parts. Those are bitter bits that you want to leave out and discard.
- Sieve through fine sieve mesh to separate out the bitter hard white parts collecting only the juice.
- Fresh homemade pomegranate juice is ready to be used to make molasses.
To make molasses –
- In a sauce pan pour 4 cups of pomegranate juice, 2 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice and ½ cup sugar.
- With constant stirring bring juice mix to gentle boil on medium heat until sugar dissolves completely.
- Once sugar is completely dissolved, reduce heat just enough to maintain a simmer.
- Keep stirring and scrapping the sides of the sauce pan and continue to cook until the molasses reduces to 1 to 1 ¼ cup.
- Dip a spoon in the molasses; if it forms a coating on the spoon, you know molasses is ready.
- Remove sauce pan from the heat and let it cool. The mix will be runny at this point. Don’t worry. It will thicken as it cools.
- Allow molasses to cool at least for 40 minutes before transferring it into a jar.
- Store it away in air tight container refrigerated for up to 6 months.
- Use it in your favorite dish.
Notes
- If making homemade pomegranate juice, remember to separate the ruby red arils properly from the rind. And pulse pomegranate seeds just enough to break juicy red parts and discard bitter white hard center bits. Don’t over pulse the juice.
- Every pomegranate varies in taste. Each one has different acidity and sweetness levels. Depending on that you may want to adjust the amount of sugar used.
- If you overcook molasses it’ll burn. Maintain low heat just enough to maintain simmer and keep scraping the edges of the sauce pan regularly.
- You know molasses if you get a coating on the spoon when dipped in it.
- Beware, if you simmer too long, it will turn solid like hard candy when it cools. Remove pan from heat when molasses coats the spoon.
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