Pomegranate sauce is a staple in Mediterranean cooking, but kicks ass even outside its traditional domain. You’d find it in supermarkets labelled as pomegranate molasses, and is easily made at home. Whenever you're looking for a beautiful balance of sweetness and mild sourness, you should give this sauce a try. 

The very basic Pomegranate Sauce recipe

Making the basic version of this sauce is so simple, you can put it down in 2 lines: Add sugar to fresh pomegranate juice and simmer for about an hour or till it thickens a bit. Then freeze, either in ¼ cup-size rounds or as ice cubes. 

This sweetish sauce can be used as it is or in combination with other flavours and ingredients. I’ll share my special recipe in a bit. Before that, here’s how to use this basic recipe that I just talked about. 

Drizzle, glaze, marinate

Us it as a substitute for strawberry sauce: Drizzle this sauce over ice-cream; use as a glaze on cheesecake, pancakes or even grilled meats. You can use it the way you would use strawberry sauce.

Us it as a dip: This versatile sauce, when combined with tamarind pulp and seasoned with salt, makes for a lovely fruity dipping sauce which goes very well with fried foods like crispy chicken or batter-fried fish and vegetables.

Use it in place of tamarind pulp: I sometimes use it as a substitute for tamarind pulp in Indian dishes like sambhar, chicken gravy and dals to give them a lovely, mild sweet & sour flavour.

Use it to flavour light meats: Season it with herbs, red chilli powder and garlic, and you can even use it to marinate chicken and fish before stir-frying.

Pic: Chicken Roulade with Pomegranate Sauce

My Special Recipe 

Click here for my special recipe for pomegranate sauce and let me tell you, it has never disappointed me, whether I’ve used it as a dipping sauce or for basting chicken. I have tried to bring in the sour flavors from three different ingredients – pomegranate juice, tomato and vinegar, none of them dominating the other. As a bonus, here is the video of an easy French Chicken Roulade Recipe (pictured above) that goes oh so perfectly with this sauce.