This is John Kohler with DiscountJuicers.com.
Today I have very special treat for you.
This is one I get, like, starting in maybe, like, October, November.
I get a flood of emails, always asking me, “John, what’s the best juicer to juice
pomegranates?”
Look I can juggle two.
But anyways, today we’re going to truly find out the best juicer for juicing pomegranates.
I always get, “Hey John, can x juicer juice pomegranates?”
Well, guess what?
Most fruit and vegetable juicers will juice pomegranates.
The main difference is that, you know, it may not make as much yield and it may be a
little bit more challenging to juice the pomegranates, and that’s what I’m going to explain today.
So, I guess on this side we have the Omega VRT 330 HD.
In general, I recommend the Omega VRT juicers for juicing fruits if you want to juice fruits.
Over on this side, we have the Olympus commercial citrus press, normally meant for juicing things
like oranges and grapefruits and tangerines, lemons and limes, but one day I had this smart
idea.
Well, hey, can I use this thing to juice pomegranates?
You absolutely can, and, in my opinion, this is the machine that works best for juicing
poms, but many people don’t want to buy an extra machine, so they’ll get, like,
their standard fruit and vegetable juicer.
But today in this episode I’m going to share with you how to juice poms in these two different
juicers.
And also, while this is kind of a juice-off, I’m juicing poms off the same exact tree,
which are this kind.
These are actually sweet poms, and there’s a difference, you know.
To get sweet poms you usually have to go to the farmer’s market.
They’re not usually sold en masse, and they usually have lighter seeds.
They’re not quite as, I’d guess, like, I guess the word would be, like, bitter.
They’re actually more sweet.
So they definitely taste really good.
And over in the Omega VRT what we’ve done is, I’ve painstakingly de-seeded four pomegranates,
and I have literally four cups or one quart of the pomegranate seeds right in my pitcher
here.
So, normally to juice pomegranates, you should de-, basically take all the seeds or the arils
out of the fruit.
Now, you know, if you wanted to, you could, but I don’t recommend this, you could just
slice the fruit up and put it in, peel and all.
But in ancient times, actually, the peels were used for medicinal uses.
So, the peels may or may not be edible, and if you do juice the peels, be aware that it’ll
make the juice, like, ten times more bitter and really not taste good.
But, it, the peel may have some additional antioxidants that are actually yet to be discovered.
So, before we get into the juice-off, let’s talk more about the pomegranate.
Now, the pomegranate is an ancient food.
It was basically around before Moses in Egypt, and, once again, the peel has been used medicinally
in ancient times.
And, the pomegranate has three times more antioxidants than green tea, so that’s amazing.
Antioxidants are really good for us, because they help prevent free-radical damage.
In my opinion, antioxidants are one of the best anti-aging foods to keep you looking
young and healthy and strong.
In addition, the pomegranates have things like vitamin A, C, E, folic acid, potassium,
iron, calcium, polyphenols, and probably many other undiscovered micronutrients and trace
minerals that are probably really protective and good for us.
I mean, for me, it’s all in the coloring, the dark, rich, deep color says it all.
We want to be really eating foods of color.
They have, basically, protective qualities to them.
Greens, reds, purples, blues, all those colors are really good.
But in any case they- some research has come out that says, you know, things like, pomegranates
can be helpful in things like cancer and whatnot.
So, when pomegranate’s in season, I definitely have a store of pomegranates in the house,
and the other- the good thing is you can buy them and, actually, they’ll store quite
a while.
I mean, these skins are actually rather thick and tough, and, uh, you know, you could have
these, like, pomegranates, for, like, a month, depending on when they were harvested and
how you store them.
Generally, storing them in the fridge is probably the best thing to do.
I like to store mine out, ‘cause I don’t actually like to fridge my fruits as much,
but then they’re not going to last as long.
I guess without further ado, let’s get into the juice-off.
Now over on this side, once again, we have the Omega VRT 330 HD juicer, the heavy duty
model, and this is called a centrifugal ejection style machine.
And how this works is that there’s an auger in here, and this auger spins around, and
it literally crushes up anything that’s put in there, and the juice is squeezed out.
So, it’s kind of working on a squeezing action.
Out of this side of the machine comes the juice, and this side come the pulp.
So, we’re going to see how the machine is effective at juicing the arils, that includes,
you know, the little water-filled aril with the seed in the middle.
Let’s go ahead and put this back together, and let’s get juicing.
So, you can see there we got the machine back together.
We’re going to take out the pusher, and once again, on the Omega VRT you don’t want
to use the pusher unless something gets stuck in the spout of the machine.
We’re going to turn this on, and we’re going to take our time.
You don’t want to just jam all the pomegranates in there.
We want to give the machine some time work, like if you put a handful of pomegranate seeds
in your mouth, you wouldn’t want to just keep shoving them in as fast as you can.
You’ve got to slow down.
So, we’re going to go ahead and carefully pour these in, and you can see it’s instantly
crushing up the arils, and, man, we got the juice coming out already.
Over on this side we got the pulp coming out.
Man, that pulp is really dry!
That’s impressive.
So, once again, we’re just putting these in in a nice and slow pace.
Man, that is super impressive.
I’ll give you guys a close-up on that.
So, once again, we started with four cups or four full pomegranates that have been seeded.
Now, you know, it is a little bit of a pain to seed the pomegranates, and that’s why
I don’t normally do pomegranates like this, ‘cause it takes too much time.
But, they say that if you do pomegranates in this way it’s actually going to taste
sweeter, and you’re not going to get the bitter rind flavor like if you use the press
over there on the other side.
So, uh, I’m also going to do a taste test at the end of this and let you guys what I
think.
Once again, all these pomegranates were off the same tree, purchased at the farmer’s
market.
Man, this working really good.
I’m super impressed on how this is juicing pomegranates.
Now the other benefit of using the Omega VRT juicer to juice the pomegranates is that you
could see on this side, I mean, the Omega VRT juicer’s really crushing up the arils
to release the juice.
But, it’s also crushing up the seed, and it’s getting some of the nutrition in the
seed mixed in with the juice, so when you drink the juice, you’re going to get all
that nutrition in you also.
Alright, check it out, man, I’m just about finished juicing the pom arils in the Omega
VRT.
Nothing could be simpler than that.
Just pour them in, once again, don’t dump them all in, pour a little bit at a time,
and let the machine work.
Man, this is where the Omega VRT juicer shines.
It literally kicks butt when juicing things like this that have a hard fiber and a soft
juice, because that’s when it truly works the best.
And, okay, it looks like we’re pretty much done here.
The pulp stopped coming out, and the juice is stopped.
We’re going to ahead and turn that off, and of the four cups of arils that we juiced
in the Omega VRT, we now have three full cups, right there, measured up, of pomegranate juice.
Now that juice is not clear.
I don’t know if you guys can see that, but it’s not clear, once again, because it mixed
in the seed, you know, some of the nutrients in the seed with the juice.
So, we’re going to go ahead and leave that over on this side.
Next I’m going to show you this pulp here and try to do a close-up.
I mean, this pulp, I mean, it looks like the consistency of sawdust.
I mean, it’s not sawdust dry, but look, I could wring it out, and, you know, basically
nothing comes out.
I mean, it’s still a little bit wet, but, man, this juicer was very efficient at doing
this.
Man, this is- I don’t even know what you’d do with this now.
Feed it to your chickens.
Man, that’s super impressive.
Anyway, so you can see how long that took you, saw how long it took literally to juice
it, which wasn’t too long, but what you didn’t see was me de-seeding four pomegranates,
and that did take some time.
So, if you got kids, that’s a good job for them to do.
And before I juice in the Olympus Citrus Press, I want to show you guys the difference in
these pomegranates.
Now, this is an organic pomegranate, bought at the store, and you can see the color difference.
I mean, this is a little bit darker than this guy, and we’re going to cut this open in
the middle.
Oh man, that’s a good one.
So you can see here that’s really dark, that’s a nice dark, rich pomegranate, and
in general, when picking a pomegranate, what I would encourage you to do is look at the
skin.
In my opinion, you should get a pomegranate with darkest, richest, deepest red-color skin
as possible if they’re the, uh, standards pomegranate, because those are going to have
the darkest, deepest red arils.
And the darkest, deepest red arils are going to have the most beneficial properties for
you.
Uh, so next we’re going to go ahead and cut open this kind.
And this is the kind I’m juicing today primarily.
This is a sweet pomegranate grown in somebody’s home, and you know this one is actually ripe,
but you can see the difference in color.
So, once again, there’s probably hundreds of varieties of pomegranate trees, but if
you’re just shopping in your local, you know, grocery store, or even health food store,
they just have something labeled “pomegranates,” and there’s only one kind.
But if you go to that same store, and you go to the apple section there, they got Granny
Smith apples, they got Fuji apples, there’s all kinds of pomegranates, so you really need
to grow your own tree or go to a farmer’s market and get some of these rare and exotic
varieties.
Actually, in my area they have a pomegranate tasting, which is insane.
Any case, let’s go ahead and move these to the side, and let’s juice next in the
Olympus Citrus Press.
This is my, by far, the favorite way to juice pomegranates.
Super simple.
Super easy.
Anyone can do it.
So, once again, this is in a manual press, this one was electric, so if your electricity
goes out, you can still juice poms in this press.
Plus, it’s really simple, real easy.
You’re just going to take your pomegranate, take a sharp knife.
You’re going to cut it in half along the equator, so obviously this is the top, this
is the bottom, or this is the top, this is the bottom, cut along the equator, and it’s
going to look like that.
Then you’re simply going to take the pomegranate, put it right here, centered-up on the little
nub here, and then you’re going to take this handle and push it down.
Now, right when you feel some resistance, you know, it’s pressed down all the pomegranate
juice, if you continue to go further, then it may be pressing some of the bitter skin
oils.
I’ve noticed that, so sometimes I’ll just juice halfway, and then I’ll juice the other
half for, like, a friend, but I’m going to go all the way down to get the maximum
yield, so we could go all the way down, and now we can pull this out.
And check it out, look at that.
That’s really dry also.
It’s literally left all the seeds in there for the most part.
There’s a few stragglers in there, but it’s left all the seeds in there, and it’s pressed
all the juice out into my container below.
Next, once again, next half of the pomegranate centered-up in there and press it down.
This, by far, is my favorite juicer for juicing citrus and for pomegranates.
It’s just super simple, super easy.
We didn’t have to de-seed them.
We didn’t have to do nothing except cut them in half, and we’re literally juicing.
Sometimes I’ll go up and down a little bit, it’ll get a little bit more juice out.
Once again, that thing is super dry.
Really impressive.
Now, the thing is, you might be thinking, “Hey John, I got another citrus press like
that.
Can I use that press for pomegranates?”
Well, you know, I wouldn’t recommend it.
A lot of the citrus presses that look like this, they work on a gearing system, and they
don’t quite have the power, and they’re not as heavy-duty as this machine here.
This machine is NSF certified, which basically means it can be used in commercial restaurants
and juice bars and bars for commercial use.
So, it’s nice and heavy duty, and it’ll withstand the abuse of juicing pomegranates.
All right, there’s that one.
So, we’ve already done two pomegranates.
Let’s go ahead and crank through the last two here.
All right, got that done.
All right, last pomegranate.
I love how simple and easy this is.
All right, that’s it.
That’s the last pomegranate, really super simple, super easy.
Now, the beauty about this machine is that it’s really easy to clean.
This machine, you got to take it apart, there’s a lot of parts to clean.
You got the screen, you got the auger.
With this machine, there’s literally two parts to clean.
You just spin this off.
Sometimes I like to, uh, you know, pour this out.
And you got two parts.
You got this cone piece right here, and then you got the funnel.
And these are the only parts you need to clean.
These are stainless steel, high quality, you know, will put up with the abuse of juicing
poms or citrus fruits in here.
And, once again, to lock this in place, you can see here on this cone there’s a cut-out
here and a cut-out here, and on the, uh, funnel there’s two little indentions, so you’re
going to line that up and then turn it.
And once you line it up and turn it in place, then the funnel actually won’t drop out.
The same thing with this, there’s two little divots, or actually, opposite of divots, little
pins sticking up.
You’re going to put that in the machine when it lines up and then turn it in place
so it locks into place.
If you don’t do this, it may kind of wobble out on you.
So, once again, that one’s super simple, super easy to clean.
Next, let’s go ahead and compare the yields here.
Now, once again, this was not a real juice-off, because I actually didn’t weigh out the
pomegranates before juicing, and I know the ones I put in the Omega VRT, some of them
were actually a little bit larger.
But, that being said, the Omega VRT juicer did make three cups, and the Olympus juicer
made about, uh, two and one-quarter cups.
Now, I really want you guys to see the difference in the color of these.
Let me go ahead and hold those up for you.
So, you can see this is like a nice, like, pink, like, darkish, like- like un-filtered
apple juice color.
And this is more like a filtered apple juice, or in this case, pomegranate juice color.
Now, the really cool thing is now I’m going to get to try them, and I never taste-tested
them side by side, so I’m going to tell you how they- they taste right now.
Wow!
That’s nice and sweet.
I don’t get any of that bitter punch.
It actually almost tastes like Kool-Aid or something, that’s, once again this is the
sweet pomegranate.
‘Kay, now we’re going to taste this one.
Oh!
You saw it there first, man.
That’s how it tasted.
You get that bitter punch, because we’re probably getting some of that rind juice in
there.
So, definitely, each juicer has their pros and cons.
I definitely would recommend the Omega VRT juicer if you want to extract the arils only.
Worked better, tastes better, probably yields more – maybe not.
Of course, if you want to take the easy route, you have lots of pomegranates to process,
you’re not going to pick out all of the arils.
Then cut them in half, blast them through here, and then I’d recommend don’t blast
it all the way down.
Come down about halfway and let most of the juice come out, then put a different cup in
there and then blast it all the way down, and then get the bitter stuff at the end,
and then separate that out.
That also tends to work.
Now, the question is, “Hey, John!
How do you use the pomegranate juice?”
Well, if it was this pomegranate juice, it tastes so good, I’ll just drink it straight
up.
But in the case of the bitter stuff, you know, some people may not want to drink this stuff
straight.
I mean, if you go buy the stuff Pom Wonderful in the store, they may be adding sugar to
it or it’s from concentrate, and you don’t know what you’re getting.
When you’re juicing your own, fresh pomegranates at home, you’re going to get a hundred percent
of the nutrition out of the pomegranates.
You’ll- including the enzymes, the vitamins, mineral, phytochemicals in as high levels
as possible.
Through modern processing, you know, you still do get benefits, but the nutrition and all
the the enzymes are lost.
The nutrition is definitely lower than doing it yourself.
I always encourage you to juice things yourself fresh at home.
That’s the best way to assure you and your family will have the highest level of nutrition.
And when you have the highest level of nutrition, in my opinion, you’re going to have, also,
the highest level of health.
So anyways, “How do you use this stuff, John?”
That’s another question I get.
Well, what I like to do on this stuff that I press out, I like to just take a standard,
like bottle here, glass bottle.
This actually had some sparkling water in it, and what we’re going to do is, we’re
going to pour it in the bottle, and I’ll probably pour in about that much.
Then what I’m going to do is, I’m going to take some sparkling mineral water.
So, what this does, this dilutes down, so it’s not quite as bitter, plus it adds the
bubbles, which makes it really fun.
So this is like a hundred percent pomegranate juice or a pomegranate soda.
And no sugar added!
I don’t like to add any extra sugar.
It’s not, uh, you know, too good for us.
Actually, because these guys are sweet, makes it taste good enough like it is.
So, this is a delicious and refreshing beverage you can see here, just like that.
And now if you want to store this, you could cap it off, store it in the fridge for like
a day, maybe two at the most.
But, man, this stuff is so delicious I could just drink it straight.
Mmmm.
Uber delicious.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this episode learning about what juicer’s truly the best juicer
for juicing poms.
And once again, depending on which way you want to go, if you want to go fast, no hassle,
blast through them, go for the Olympus Citrus Press.
And once again, if you actually want the sweet pomegranate juice without that bitter flavor
and the full nutrition of the seeds, then you’re going to go with the Omega VRT 330
HD or Omega VRT 350 HD.
Once again, my name is John Kohler with DiscountJuicers.com.
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