Pomegranate Chicken with Pomegranate Molasses

Hey hey hey.

Man it’s been a while. So how’ve you been? Terrible?? Why? Oh, because I haven’t posted in quite a while? Well I’m sorry to hear that, and had I known that I was that important in your life, I might have gotten off of my lazy behonkes a few days sooner and posted something for goodness sake!

Anyway, remember the other day I was telling you how cool I am? Well I come to re-iterate that. You see, right before Pesach I got an email from Pom Wonderful, the company that makes pomegranate juices, and they asked me if they can be the official pomegranate juice of the KosherGastronome. To which I replied, only if you’ll put my picture on your bottle, to which they happily complied.

See?

Anyway, what really happened, is the wonderful people over at Pom sent me over a case of pomegranate juice for me to tinker with, but it took me a while for my creative brain juices to flow.

The first thing I thought of doing with the pomegranate juice, was to make some pomegranate molasses. Why? I’m not sure, however, Pom wonderful is 100% pomegranate juice, and if you simply add some sugar and lemon juice, and cook it down, you will first have pomegranate syrup (also known as grenadine, which would be perfect for the tequila you’re currently drinking in honor of Cinco de Mayo) and if you continue to cook it and thicken it up some more, you will have pomegranate molasses. Apparently pomegranate molasses is famous in Persian cuisine, and some Turkish foods, but I honestly have no idea.

Ok so pour four cups of pomegranate juice into a pot, add juice of a half of lemon, a half a cup of sugar, and cook it on medium until it starts to simmer, and then lower it to low, and let it cook until thickened, about 50-60 minutes.

Now the way you know it’s nice and thick is the spoon-swipe trick, like so:

Take a spoon, and dip it in the syrup, and wipe your finger across the spoon, and if the streak your finger makes stays, then you know your syrup is good and thick.

Ok so now that you have your pomegranate molasses, you can do many things with it. I honestly had it in my braincicles to make a lamb with the pomegranate molasses, but was too lazy to get lamb, and had chicken in the house, so Chicken with Pomegranate molasses it was.

I started by cutting up some onions and some garlic, and placed them on the bottom of the pan. I put the chicken on top of the onions, salted and peppered them up, and since the pomegranate was cooking up on the stove, I decided to take some of the then pomegranate syrup, and poured about a half a cup of the syrup on the bottom of the chicken pot.

I had the oven pre-heated at 450, and let the chicken cook for 20 minutes. I then had to let it sit around until the molasses was ready, and when the molasses was ready, I slathered those li’l pollos with the pomegranate molasses, and let it cook at 350 for another 20 minutes or so.

Ok so the moment of truth, how was it all? Well to be honest, the chicken tasted good, not great, but pretty good. (I feel like you can’t say that on a food blog, because I have to make you guys think that everything I make is amazing, well truth be told some stuff are just amazing [without the italics], but that doesn’t mean it tasted like sock stew, it just might not be foie gras [shout out to Nechemia Gertner for the foie gras..gracias]).

As for the molasses, well, I actually thickened it up a little too much, and when it completely cooled down, it ended up looking like pomegranate toffee, but no biggie, I was able to work with it, by heating it up a little so I could spread it on the chicken easier.

But wait – I didn’t use the whole pomegranate molasses on the chicken, I had some leftover molasses to mess around, so tune in until the next time I decide to not be lazy, and prepared to be wowed.

Happy Cinco de Mayo

Ingredients:

• 4 cups Pom Wonderful
• 1/2 a lemon juiced
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 4 chicken bottoms
• 2-3 medium onions, cut into half moon slices
• 4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

Directions:

For the Molasses –

1. Combine the pomegranate juice, lemon juice, and sugar, and bring to a simmer on medium heat
2. Lower to low, and cook until thickens up, about 50-60 minutes.

For Chicken –

1. Pre-heat oven to 450
2. Put onion and garlic on bottom of pan, and place chicken on top of it, and pour a 1/2 cup of pomegranate syrup over everything (you can reserve 1/2 a cup of of the syrup before it thickens down to molasses if you make the molasses in advance). Cook for 15-20 minutes
3. Spread the molasses over all the pieces, and lower the oven to 350, and cook for another 20-25 minutes, or until done