This Photo of a Completely Peeled Pomegranate Is Weirdly Disturbing

published Jan 17, 2018

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Pomegranates are such a wonderful fruit. They’re full of healthful antioxidants, and they add color and flavor to everything from salads to cocktails. Pomegranates are as good with eggplant as they are with chocolate — or you can just eat them straight and enjoy the way the seeds explode into tart, red juice when you bite into them.

Sure, it can be a lot of work to get the seeds out, but all that labor just makes the payoff seem more special. And on top of all that, pomegranates just look pretty, with all those dark, red arils lined up like little jewels. That is, until someone takes all the peels completely off and leaves just the fruit, and then the pomegranates look frankly terrifying.

New Yorker food correspondent Helen Rosner shared this photo of “peeled” pomegranates on Twitter, and they look somehow beautiful and disturbing at the same time. It’s like something out of a Guillermo Del Toro movie. If the creature from Pan’s Labyrinth crawled out of one of those, it would not be a surprise.

Rosner says she’s pretty sure these aren’t actually the result of painstakingly peeling a pomegranate, though. It’s more likely that someone took all the arils — the red seed pods — and reconstructed them into balls. But still, these are fascinating. How on earth did someone assemble them?

Building these “peeled” pomegranates must have taken forever. And just imagine the mess it must have made, between peeling and seeding all the pomegranates, then reassembling all the seeds into new pomegranates — like tiny, juicy, 500-piece puzzles where all the pieces are exactly the same color and pop if you squeeze them too hard. (If you decide to try this at home, here’s a tip for getting rid of pomegranate juice stains.)

The peeled pomegranates are strangely mesmerizing, and if someone posted a tutorial, I would definitely try it. But if you’re just looking to eat one, here’s an easier way to get the seeds out of a pomegranate.

Do you think these pomegranates are pretty, or creepy?