What is Grenadine?
Grenadine is a pomegranate syrup that was super popular during the tiki drinks craze of the 1930s and 1940s. It provides a candy-like sweetness and fruitiness to your drinks that you cannot replicate with other ingredients, or with most shop bought grenadine for that matter. Its use in cocktails is very prevalent today and it features in many of our favourite drinks. It's an essential syrup to make for your home bar. Plus, it's amazing over pancakes.
Why should I make Grenadine?
It's super easy and quick to make. Yes you can buy it, our recommendation though is to make it yourself, you know exactly what's in it, and it lasts for months and months (stored properly!). It's cheap and frankly better than most shop bought grenadine, most of which is just "sweet red" with no pomegranate actually inside. It adds an amazing flavour and texture. If you like sweet drinks, make some grenadine-based cocktails.
Grenadine cocktails are some of our favourites, so we'll be adding many more to Barorder over the next few months. Here's a great one to check out, the Queen's Park Hotel Super Cocktail. That drink showcases the importance of a really good grenadine. Another great example, and one of our favourites, is a 12 Mile Limit.
Ingredients
- 600g granulated white sugar
- 400g unsweetened pomegranate juice. Yes, weigh your juice, and make sure it's unsweetened, we'll add the sugar
- Optional but great: 1 tsp pomegranate molasses. It's great in salad dressings too
- Optional but great: 1/2 tsp rose water. It's very strong, add just a little, don't be tempted
How to make it
- Prep time
- 1 minute
- Cooking time
- 3-4 minutes
- Total time
- 5 minutes
- 1Preheat a saucepan on a low heat.
- 2Add the pomegranate juice, sugar and pomegranate molasses, if you're using it.
- 3Stir to combine until all the sugar is dissolved.
- 4Keep it on a low heat and stir constantly. Don't let it boil or simmer.
- 5Keep going until all the sugar grains are gone. It should be a deep, dark red.
- 6Once fully combined, take it off the heat and add the rose water. Give it a stir and you're done.
Storing your Grenadine
Store in the fridge in an airtight bottle that has been sterilised beforehand. Stored this way it will last about a month. The recipe above will make enough grenadine for a few months.
Our tip, freeze it! It will last for months and months in the freezer. Then decant a little syrup into a bottle in the fridge as you need it. Perfect, an indefinite supply of homemade grenadine.
