Homemade Grenadine

I’ve become really interested in drink mixing and how much better drinks are when you use top notch ingredients–night and day.

While I was in Atlanta recently, my neighbor and I went to Buford Highway Farmer’s Market (which is really a giant grocery store with the best selection of ingredients for all kinds of cuisines–especially Asian cuisines. They also have an unbelievable produce section. While I was browsing the produce, I found some HUGE pomegranates. Pomegranates are easy to find this time of year.

They were gorgeous and heavy for their size (just what you want from fruit that you plan to use for juice). So I bought three of them. We’re going to use them to make grenadine, which many people mistakenly believe is cherry flavor, but it’s not.

First things first, we have to get these things open and get the seeds out. First, score the fruit around the equator–just through the skin, not too deep into the fruit. You then have to pry the two halves apart with your hands. It’s not too difficult.

Then, get a bowl of water and a wooden spoon like the one above. I like this one because it has a small, but thick bowl. Take the pomegranate half and place it cut side down in your hand and while holding it over the bowl of water, hit it firmly with the back of the spoon. This should dislodge the seeds into the bowl of water. Continue in this fashion until all of the seeds are out.

There will be parts of the husk in the bowl of seeds. Skim these out with your hands.

I poured the seeds and the water into the jar of a blender. I blended them on low speed until all of them were moving. You don’t want to chop up the seeds, just break the skins open so that the juice can be extracted.

I used my hand held colander scoop for the first pass to get the most of the seeds/pulp out.

Then I put the pulp and seeds into a square of cheesecloth.

I used a bowl to hold the cheesecloth in place while I put the seeds and pulp in it. I squeezed the pulp until very little juice would come out when I squeezed it. Then I lined my fine mesh sieve with cheesecloth and poured the juice through it into a pitcher.

Then I poured it into a half gallon jar to let it sit overnight so that the solids could settle out. This is one of my favorite tricks.

So, when I pulled the juice out of the refrigerator, it looked like this:

I poured off the juice with no sediment, and dumped the sediment.

Since, I had added water to the juice, I took about 3 cups and cooked it down until it measured about a cup. Then I added the rest of the juice and brought it to a low simmer. I turned off the heat and added 1 cup of sugar for every 1 cup of juice (about 5 cups) plus 5 tablespoons of bottled lemon juice. You absolutely can start this recipe with the pomegranate juice that you can buy in refrigerated section of your grocery.

Here’s what it looks like compared to the commercial grenadine (which is only 15% juice and is cherry and pomegranate flavors):

It tastes really good, but nothing like commercial grenadine, unsurprisingly.

Now, what drinks can you use grenadine in?

Here are a couple of posts that might help you find your new favorite drink: https://www.liquor.com/best-grenadine-cocktails-7852552

https://www.themixer.com/en-us/trends/grenadine-cocktails/

Have fun!