Pomelo

PREP - Despite the very thick rind, pomelos are fairly easy to work with. Nearly the entire fruit can be used in some form or another (see "Top to Tail Eating" in the More section below), so make sure that you prepare your pomelo according to what you plan to do with the fruit.

The outer layer of the peel (i.e. the zest) can be removed with a vegetable peeler or citrus zester. To remove the thick pith, use a sharp knife to cut a small disk off of the stem end of the pomelo, then 4-6 deep cuts through the pith from top to bottom. Peel the pith away from the fruit - works slowly, as the pith will often adhere to the fruit quite strongly. Alternately, simply cut right through the pomelo from top to bottom and remove the halved fruit from the center, once again working carefully to extract the fruit.

The fruit itself requires a little bit of preparation before using. The membrane surrounding the segments tends to be bitter and very tough, so you'll want to remove it. Fortunately, the toughness of this membrane makes it fairly easy to cut or peel away, so you don't usually need to do anything fancy like a citrus supreme. Many commercial pomelo varieties are seedless, though there may be very small seeds present. Big or small, they should be easy to remove once you've taken the membrane off.

Once you've gotten the pomelo segments free from the rind and the membrane, they can be used like any other citrus. If you plan on using the zest, make sure to wash the surface with warm water to get rid of any wax. The pith doesn't require any specific preparation initially, though if you do cook it, it will need to be soaked to eliminate bitterness.

USE - The fruit itself can be cooked with, thought it is not as popular for this purpose as many other citrus fruits. There are several reasons for this; even good, sweet pomelos are much less juicy than more familiar citrus fruits, the membrane surrounding the segments is thick and quite bitter, and the large vesicles in the flesh tend to separate rather than stay together. Nonetheless, it is possible to cook the fruit if you adapt to these hurdles. The thick, spongy rind can in fact be cooked like a vegetable, though it is bitter unless soaked for a long period of time. The zest can be used to add flavour or peeled carefully and candied like any other citrus peel.

The same features that make pomelo somewhat difficult to cook with make it ideal to use raw. It's extremely easy to remove the fruit from the membrane (and to the break the segments into smaller pieces), making it quite simple to use in salads. Because it's less juicy than many other citrus fruits, it also adds appreciable texture and mouthfeel, allowing it to anchor rather than garnish a dish.

As a final note, you should taste your pomelo before deciding what to do with it. Some will be quite sweet, and are best eaten as-is, while others can be a little sour or bitter, and will work better in a salad or similar dish.

Pomelo is distinct from, and should not be confused with:

• Grapefruit (Citrus × paradisi), which has a similar flavour but a very thin skin and (generally) more bitter fruit.  Historically the name pomelo was more commonly applied to grapefruit, while shaddock an its spelling variants were used for C. maxima.  Grapefruit is actually a hybrid of pomelo and sweet orange.
• Oroblanco (Citrus maxima × C. paradisi), which has very thick skin like a pomelo, but a taste more like a grapefruit.  Oroblanco is seedless.
• Melogold (Citrus maxima × C. paradisi), which looks quite a bit like an oroblanco, but has a sweetness closer to a pomelo.  It is also seedless.
• Mandelo (Cocktail Grapefruit) (Citrus hybrid), which is another pomelo hybrid, but much more like its other parents (mandarin/tangerine) in flavour and texture.

Sweet grapefruit is easy to find and makes a decent substitute for pomelo, though even the sweetest varieties tend to be a bit more bitter.  While the flavour of a sweet grapefruit will work fairly well, the texture will be softer and there will be more juice, so adjust your recipes accordingly. Melogold makes a good pomelo replacement, but it is not a commonly encountered citrus variety, and is likely to be harder to find than pomelo anyway.

Most pomelos are yellowish green-skinned with pale white flesh. There are, however, a few varieties with reddish-pink flesh.  Individual varieties also vary between sweeter and more acidic.

Siamese Sweet - A common, white-fleshed cultivar with a sweet but slightly bitter taste.  The vesicles (juice-sacs within the flesh) are fairly dry and easily separated, making this an ideal variety for making salads and similar preparations.  Siamese sweet is also an important citrus parent, having been crossed with other varieties to yield a number of important commercial fruits.

Chandler - A popular, sweet, pink-fleshed pomelo variety (often marketed using the spelling pummelo), and the result of a cross between a Siamese Sweet and a Siamese Pink.  The flavour is considered better than either parent, and the flesh is fairly juicy. The pink pomelo shown in cross-section on this page is a Chandler pomelo.

Honey - Probably the most commonly encountered variety in North America, this is the primary pomelo variety marketed by China.  The flesh is white and either seedless or with very small seeds. The fruit is generally sweet and moderately juicy, though it tends to vary somewhat from specimen to specimen.