Color Your Culinary Life with Saffron

Saffron is a wonderful spice and the most amazing thing about it is that it can be used in sweet as well as savory dishes and also vegetarian as well as non-vegetarian dishes equally effectively. And it not only imparts its amazing flavor and fragrance to the dish, but also a delightful color so as to make the dish look mouthwatering.

But many people don’t use this amazing spice frequently because it is the most expensive spice in the world. Well, it’s true that it is so, but you don’t have to break a bank to be able to use it every day. Just look at the Persians. They use it in almost every dish, every day. How do they afford it? It’s because they make the most of even a tiny amount of saffron. Let’s see how to create a big impact from a little amount of saffron.

 

Various Grades – Which one to Choose?

 

As you may know, saffron is yielded from the stigmas of flowers of a plant Crocus sativus. One of the reasons behind its high price is that the production is quite laborious and is done manually. Other reason is a large number of flowers (around 80,000) are required to produce just one pound of saffron.

Saffron comes in various grades. The best among them is negin followed by sargol; these are yielded from the tips of the stigmas and are the strongest. The remaining part of stigma after separating the tip is only the yellow side of the strand and is the cheapest. It doesn’t impart much of color to the dish but offers some aroma. Only 1 gram of real high quality saffron can be added to several dishes to obtain the desired color and fragrance. And this is how you can make the most of it! It then comes at a cheaper price than most other spices.

Get the highest quality of saffron at Herat Saffron Co. which is produced in the Herat Province of Afghanistan. While buying saffron here, you can also help the Afghan women who work for producing it.

How to Use Saffron?

There are various methods of using saffron in cooking. Persian cooks grind saffron strands into a find powder so that even a small pinch releases sufficient color and fragrance to make an ordinary dish look rich.

Thus if you want to use saffron every day, invest in a small stone, metal or ceramic mortar and pestle the inner surface of which should be rough to grind saffron. It’s best not to use it to grind other spices or wash it.

If saffron strands are damp or weather is humid, they are a bit difficult to grind. In that case you can keep them in microwave for 20-30 seconds before grinding. Adding a pinch of coarse sugar is also helpful in making grinding easy.

Another way of using saffron is to brew it in either boiling water or in ice. For both, you can add ¼ teaspoon of saffron powder to one tablespoon of boiling water or a crushed ice cube respectively and let it infuse for around 10-15 minutes.

Find various yummy saffron recipes on the Instagram page of Herat Saffron Co. So, now you can use saffron daily without spending a lot. Use it and color your culinary life!