Reduced sour-pomegranate juice, syrupy and tart. The acidulant of Levantine cooking — fattoush dressing, muhammara, kebab glaze.
Persian-origin (rob-e anar in Farsi), spread west through the Ottoman empire and now standard from Iran to Lebanon. Syrian Aleppo and Iranian Yazd are the heritage production centers. Cortas (Lebanon, founded 1945) is the canonical export brand; Al Wadi and Sadaf compete on U.S. shelves.
Cortas (Lebanon) is the gold-standard export — single-ingredient sour pomegranate, no added sugar. Many U.S. supermarket bottles add corn syrup; check the label. Iranian Yazd-area producers make a thicker, blacker version (rob-e anar e tursh) that some Persian cooks consider the only real one.
Color of dark espresso, viscous like cool maple syrup, slow sheet off the spoon. Sourer than balsamic, with a deep raisiny bass and almost no sweetness. A teaspoon will pucker; tablespoon volumes are tagine-territory.
Sour pomegranate (not the sweet eating kind) is the only fruit that works — sweet pomegranate reduces too cloying. Juice simmered uncovered to one-third volume; goes from watery red to viscous black-red over 60-90 minutes. Sugar added in cheaper commercial brands (read labels — Cortas is sugar-free) flattens the acidity edge.
Variations
Lebanese Cortas (single-ingredient, sour, the export standard) vs. Iranian Yazd-area rob-e anar (thicker, blacker, sometimes smokier from copper-pot reduction) vs. Turkish nar ekşisi (slightly sweeter, often supermarket-grade). Some artisanal Aleppine producers age in clay for a year for deeper bass.
On the Palate
Where Pomegranate Molasses sits in the Syrian flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 8How it's made
4 steps · 35 min active + 1 hour 40 min waiting
- 130 min
Juice 3 kg sour pomegranates to get 1.5 L juice.
- 25 min
Strain through fine mesh.
- 390 min
Simmer in heavy pot with 50 g sugar 1.5 hr until reduced to 300 ml syrupy.
Watch outReduce to about a third — it goes from watery red to a thick, syrupy black-red that coats the spoon.
- 410 min
Cool; bottle; keeps months refrigerated.
Watch outPull it off just before it looks fully set — it thickens more as it cools; over-reduced, it turns to hard candy in the jar.
