Contents
Choosing a fully ripe pomegranate that has the perfect balance of juiciness and sweetness is not easy. Knowledgeable consumers are familiar with several tricks, based on long-term observations, that allow you to determine the ripeness of a large southern berry visually. The skills of tactile experience also help to choose a vitamin purchase successfully.
When can I buy a pomegranate
The ripening time for pomegranates is in autumn. Already in the first months of the off-season, a new crop goes on sale. In November, December and January, fresh, juicy and fully ripe fruits are selected in the markets. Pomegranate is an export item for many countries. To buy a fresh product, before purchasing, you can study:
- where the fruits come from to store shelves;
- what season the crop falls in a particular country.
Connoisseurs advise choosing high-quality ripe pomegranates, as in the photo above:
- in winter – grown up in Latin America;
- spring – imported from Turkey and Egypt;
- in summer – from Greece;
- in autumn – brought from the Caucasus and Central Asia.
How to choose a ripe pomegranate
The granular berry, splashing with red sweet juice, is not cheap. Therefore, it is better to familiarize yourself with its features in order to choose a ripe and high-quality pomegranate, and not stale or rotten.
How to determine the ripeness of a pomegranate by appearance
When choosing a pomegranate, you should look at large specimens, in which the juicy shell of the grains is usually ripe and sweet, and the film between the slices is thin and transparent. The most common fruits in stores with a peel of different shades of red – from pinkish to orange. The cover is also bright red or intense burgundy. The color of the skin often determines the maturity of the pomegranate. There are some varieties of other colors:
- pinkish green;
- white;
- creamy.
The flesh may also be only slightly pinkish. But such varieties rarely go on sale. More often they are purchased in the areas where they are grown – in Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Spain. Trees grow with such pomegranates in the Crimea.
How to choose a good pomegranate by smell
A useful tasty fruit, if it is not cut, and there are no cracks, it does not smell of anything. Therefore, it is right to choose a pomegranate that does not emit any flavor. If you can hear some smell, the fruit may have been damaged during transportation. Due to compression or a strong blow, the skin cracked, and rotting processes began inside. A foreign odor is also possible, which is absorbed due to storage in unsuitable conditions.
How to choose a delicious pomegranate by hardness
When buying, they also use the tactile method. When choosing a pomegranate in a store, determine how hard its peel is. Ideally, it is not even, but with bends, dry and dense, without cracks. It seems that the thin crust hardly holds the grains poured with juice, and therefore it was slightly deformed. With slight compression, rows of dense grains are felt. The crust is also strong and cannot be pried off with a fingernail. The soft area indicates putrefactive processes due to impact.
Another feature of a ripe pomegranate is a pleasant, slightly perceptible roughness. External roughness indicates that the fruit has accumulated enough sugars, and they were plucked already at the time of full maturity. Only a pomegranate fully ripened on a tree will have a maximum concentration of juiciness and sweetness.
Having chosen a fruit, you can easily shake it. With good quality, the crust adheres tightly to the grains. In the hand, the feeling of a whole object. Fruits that have been lying for a long time dry up, the pulp significantly loses its juiciness. The shell of the grains becomes sluggish, the taste deteriorates.
The next indicator of ripeness – the crown at the top is formed from dry triangular sepals of a brownish hue or corresponds to the main color of the entire peel. When choosing a quality product, you need to know that the sepals should not be green inside or too woody. An important point – in ripened fruits, the sepals are open, turned outward.
How to determine the ripeness of a pomegranate by weight
It is easiest to choose a ripe pomegranate when buying, if you focus on its weight and size, 8-10 cm in diameter. As a rule, fruits are brought to the market, the weight of which is in the range of 400-700 g. It is possible that those fruits that were picked unripe have a smaller mass. Large pomegranates have fresh and juicy grains. Between two fruits of the same volume, choose the one that weighs more. Weight indicates the juiciness of the pulp. A dried specimen may also have less weight, which has already lost some of the juice due to wilting. Or vice versa, did not have time to ripen, pour.
Experienced consumers choose the heavier fruit as it tends to be tastier:
- pulp filled with juice;
- enough sugar has accumulated.
How to choose a sweet pomegranate by sound
Ingenuity will help to apply another method by which a good pomegranate is determined. It turns out that these grainy, tart-tasting berries at the time of their absolute maturity can resonate interestingly. It may not work to choose them in this way with a seller on the market. And on the layouts in supermarkets, the most curious buyers carefully train. Lightly clicking with a fingernail on the pomegranate, which was selected according to the criteria for appearance, listen to the sound made by the fruit. Many sources claim that high-quality specimens that have reached the maximum sugar content and filled with juice make a special sonorous sound. It is compared with the ringing that results from a light blow to a metal object.
Such a resonance is explained by a significant amount of juice formed in the pulp of the pomegranate. Dryish or unripe fruits also resonate in response to tapping, but in a different way. Poor-quality fruits with a whole peel emit a deaf, barely audible, rumble. A damaged peel prevents any reverberation. Only experienced buyers choose the product in this way. It’s best to try it out at home first.
There is also a somewhat radical method to choose a high-quality copy by sound. Having tried to squeeze the grenade in a fist, you can distinguish a slight crunch. This is also claimed to be a sufficient indicator of a fresh and ripe product.
How to identify a tainted pomegranate
When choosing fruits from those offered, they first of all rely on visual assessment. The color of the peel determines whether the pomegranate is ripe or not, and then resort to more sophisticated methods of quality control. Signals for caution are:
- mechanical damage to the peel;
- spots of a different color, which stand out sharply on a uniform surface;
- dents and cracks in the crust.
If a grenade is allowed to be picked up, it must be examined from all sides, paying attention to:
- for the safety of the peel;
- the presence of a uniform color of the cover with overflows close in tone;
- fruit firmness;
- dry sepals and their brown color;
- lack of smell.
Pomegranates with soft areas are laid without hesitation, because this is a clear sign of a spoiled product. Moreover, not only one slice can be of poor quality, but also all neighboring ones. The defect occurs from impact, freezing or infection with various pathogens of rot. They categorically do not choose grenades for purchase, in which a small black speck is visible on the soft area of uXNUMXbuXNUMXbthe cover. Such a spot is an obvious sign of a focus of rot, from where the process has spread, most likely, to all the lobules.
They avoid buying fruits, choosing pomegranates for ripeness, with a glossy skin, without roughness, which indicates their immaturity. Cracked specimens are dangerous because they often develop fermentation under the influence of air. As a result, fungi have already spread on the surface of the shells of the grains.
When choosing a pomegranate, it is also clear to the touch which fruits have been stored for a long time. In such specimens, the crust is too dry, thin, and voids are noticeable near it.
Conclusion
To choose a pomegranate, ripe and sweet, means to develop observation based on the recommendations received. Applying the advice of experts, choosing a pomegranate, they enjoy healthy and tasty fruits.
