[HN Gopher] Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice
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Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 74 points
Date : 2024-04-03 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (daily.jstor.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (daily.jstor.org)
| Aloisius wrote:
| Years ago, I was convinced that saffron's "taste" was more mental
| than anything else, so I ran a little matched pairs experiment to
| see if anyone could taste the difference between a rice dish with
| saffron or one without. No one could.
|
| Admittedly, it was too small of an experiment to be sure, but it
| just seems like a very expensive food dye to me.
|
| I'll just stick to turmeric.
| gerash wrote:
| I believe you diluted it too much
| thrawa8387336 wrote:
| Easy to burn the flavor off
| terio wrote:
| I used saffron mainly for paella and some seafood dishes. The
| flavor is definitely distinctive although subtle.
| neeleshs wrote:
| Was there no difference in fragrance either? Saffron imparts a
| very distinct fragrance, more than taste. And that fragrance
| affects perceived taste. In larger quantities, it has a bitter-
| ish taste. I use it in rice puddings, greek yogurt (simplest
| recipe possible - yogurt, sugar, cardamom powder and few
| threads of saffron. Big difference with and without saffron).
| JohnFen wrote:
| I never noticed a difference in the odor of saffron rice and
| regular rice. But as I said in a different comment, I take
| this to mean that I've never had saffron rice that actually
| had saffron in it.
| kelipso wrote:
| Generally it's very hard to prove a negative. I can definitely
| smell the difference in saffron and non-saffron rice dishes.
| There are plenty of people who can't distinguish between say
| roses and coffee but the distinction definitely exists.
| kleiba wrote:
| I find that hard to believe because to me, personally, saffron
| has such a disgusting taste that I would taste three miles
| against the wind on any given day of the week.
|
| I'll stick to tumeric, too.
| an_aparallel wrote:
| Sorry this is ridiculous. Not all saffron is equal. Iranian
| saffron is so pungent that just opening a container of it will
| have folks be able to smell it across the room.
|
| This stuff is usually locked up in Indian/middle eastern
| supermarkets.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Here's a weird thing: I don't have any idea what saffron tastes
| like. Ignoring saffron rice (which to me seems exactly like
| ordinary rice, but yellow -- which probably means it didn't
| really have saffron in it?), I've only had dishes that include
| it (that I knew of) a couple of times in my life. Those dishes
| had many different flavors going on, so I couldn't tell which
| of those flavors were saffron.
|
| I need to just get some and make a tea or something with it so
| I know what it tastes like.
| akavi wrote:
| I found this hard to believe, but confirmation bias is a hell
| of a drug, so I ran my own quick blinded experiment: 3 cups of
| hot water, one of which had a small pinch of saffron swirled
| around in it, one with a 1/4 tsp of turmeric, one plain.
|
| That it was trivial to tell which was which is an
| understatement. There's a floral sweetness to saffron that is
| absolutely unmistakable to me.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Saffron's expensive by weight; but not per recipe. A teaspoon of
| the stuff could float away on the breeze, but few recipes call
| for as much as a teaspoon. A PS5.00 box of saffron lasts me about
| 3 months, and I use the stuff weekly.
| abtinf wrote:
| I think most people have no idea how to use it efficiently
| either. Cooking shows and recipes often depict simply adding
| threads directly to a recipe.
|
| Growing up, I was taught to grind a small amount into a fine
| powder and mix with a bit of very hot water, which yields an
| incredibly potent, fragrant, and inexpensive ingredient that
| can flavor significant quantities of food.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Does grinding help the extraction? I just steep the threads
| for ten minutes in freshly-boiled water, then strain them (my
| mother was not a great cook, and I don't think she ever used
| saffron).
| an_aparallel wrote:
| Yes, I grind with raw sugar granules something like 20
| threads. And then mix it with a bit of rose water, then add
| to meat marinade or stew. For other cultures mix it with
| warmed up butter (fat will transfer flavour even better
| than rose water) or wine
| logro wrote:
| Had anyone tried to grow their own saffron? How did it go?
| giantg2 wrote:
| No, but I had thought about planting safflower which is
| supposed to be a budget alternative. Never went through with
| it.
| an_aparallel wrote:
| Safflower is a much different flavour, is used in Georgian
| spice mixes and is what bulks up a lot of herbal tea mixes.
| The first time I bought it, I laughed and said "ha smells
| like tea bags".
| doodlebugging wrote:
| We grow saffron here in N Texas and have for about 3 years now.
| Last year was our best year for production but that is only
| because we expanded the number of bulbs that we have planted so
| our saffron harvest grew in line with that. The first year we
| ended up with less than a dozen threads total.
|
| It is easy to grow. Just stick the bulb about 1" to 1.5" (25 mm
| - 40 mm) below the surface and water it in. Keep it moist but
| not wet so the bulbs don't rot. It will sprout and then produce
| a nice flower which will have the red stigma or styles that you
| seek. Each flower will have 3 of them. They pluck easily and
| take about a day to dry naturally.
|
| Insects will visit the flowers like any other flowers. You have
| a time-limited window in which to pick them before the flower
| dries out and it becomes more difficult to separate them from
| the petals by hand.
|
| The part of saffron growing that makes it expensive is the
| labor involved in harvesting the red bits which give the
| distinctive flavor. All of this is done by hand and if you have
| lots of crocuses to harvest from then you will spend a lot of
| time gathering them.
|
| We have a couple of 2' x 4' (0.6 X 1.2 m) galvanized steel oval
| raised garden beds where we grow ours. They are filled with
| high quality raised bed soil and we do not fertilize our garden
| except with mulches and compost.
|
| We had a great showing during the hottest part of the summer
| last year. In total we were able get several grams of saffron
| from our two raised beds which have between 75 and 200 plants
| growing in them. I don't really have an accurate count of the
| number of bulbs we have.
|
| EDIT: This photo shows the saffron beds in our garden. [0] We
| are still in the process of clearing things this spring. Inside
| the rings you can see our bulbs, truly a tiny fraction of a
| metric fuck-tons worth but they have so far yielded several
| meals worth of flavor. We use about a dozen threads per meal
| which means that 4 blooms will give you enough for a single
| meal.
|
| [0] https://postimg.cc/pmJbhZVk
|
| EDIT2: I may have implied that a small operation like ours
| still takes a lot of time to harvest. That is not accurate at
| all. Since ours are confined to those two beds and considering
| that they don't all bloom at once it is a simple process to
| collect the saffron once the bloom period begins. It takes us a
| few minutes a day and we spend that time out in the garden
| anyway managing our other things so it really requires no extra
| effort to grow and enjoy this spice.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| Thanks for this information! I'm always amazed at the types
| of people who browse HN.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| I just added a photo for context. Thanks for reading all
| that.
| technological wrote:
| Where to buy the bulb ?
| hinkley wrote:
| They grow reasonably well in the PNW but I'm not so sure about
| the flavor intensity.
| aimor wrote:
| Yes, a couple years ago I started a few beds of saffron at home
| (zone 7). They're crocus, and bulbs, so I figured why not. I
| ordered online and planted in the fall and they all flowered
| that year. I went out after work and picked the saffron by
| hand, not nearly as difficult as blogs would have you think it
| is (no, they don't need to "be harvested at mid-morning, when
| the flower is fully open to the Sun"). Just pinch with your
| fingers and pluck. I harvested about 1 tablespoon (didn't weigh
| it), worth maybe 1/3 the cost of the bulbs.
|
| The next year two of my three locations came back with strong
| leaves and offshoots, but almost nothing flowered. A big
| disappointment. This year I'll split them up (or maybe split up
| just one bed) and see what happens. Despite this, I'd encourage
| anyone in the right climate to give it a shot.
|
| Also, if you're looking for easy expensive spices to grow, try
| bread (opium) poppy.
| PreInternet01 wrote:
| I love saffron! Not because of its taste (which I kind-of hate)
| or other properties (like staining, which I _definitely_ hate, or
| security-theatre-triggering, but more about that below), but
| mostly due to the rituals around it, and because a friend of mine
| once got booted off a TV cooking show as a result of using it.
|
| So, visiting the famous (and horrible, but thank you!) Spice
| Market in Istanbul recently, I _just could not resist_ learning
| everything I could about saffron (mostly: how to spot the fake
| stuff -- spoiler: the paint sinks in hot water), plus, of course,
| taking home some of the _real_ stuff for said friend.
|
| This, on an unplanned detour through Germany on my way back, got
| me into a bit of trouble. Apparently, the post-9/11 scanners that
| determine whether your hand-luggage contains anything
| troublesome, have some of their own issues with saffron...
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Why did they get booted for using it?
| PreInternet01 wrote:
| The reason given on the show was that the celebrity-chef
| judge did not appreciate the taste.
|
| That didn't (and doesn't) make an awful lot of sense though,
| since they used the same spice in very similar quantities in
| another dish the week before, and were praised for that by
| the same judge.
|
| So, everyone's best guess is that the "reality show" script
| writers decided it was time for them to go, to give more
| screen time to more interesting contestants...
| OJFord wrote:
| It couldn't possibly have been something else about that
| dish that _was_ different, or simply that they didn 't
| think saffron went well with that one..?
| resolutebat wrote:
| Safrole is a precursor for MDMA (ecstasy), so Customs might be
| interested, but I wouldn't have expected TSA-style scanners to
| pick this up.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safrole
| torbengee wrote:
| A couple of years ago I trained some ResNets to detect saffron
| flowers and their stigmas and then simulated the picking process
| in Blender. One would have to develop a suitable soft gripper and
| use a precise pick-and-place robotic arm (delta robots are great
| for this), but IMHO the amount of manual labour during harvest
| can be solved with today's technology.
| CaptainFever wrote:
| What about Oscar? https://www.biooekonomie-
| bw.de/en/articles/news/saffron-cult...
| torbengee wrote:
| They've figured out how to detect and cut off the flowers. No
| solution to picking the threads yet.
| sillywalk wrote:
| I used to work in a spice factory. Unlike everything else, they
| locked the saffron up separately. There were detailed weight logs
| for when we hand packed (with tweezers) it into jars. We were
| told it was worth more by weight than cocaine.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| I'm taking the cocaine wasn't locked then...
| hinkley wrote:
| I would assume the cocaine at a spice factory would be locked
| up better and in the same manner as it is locked up at a
| brokerage.
| throwup238 wrote:
| All over the bathroom counter?
| huytersd wrote:
| It is. My family runs a saffron business in India and we check
| all our employees every night when they leave.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Saffron ranges from $2 - $10 per gram for retail amounts in
| different parts of the world and less at wholesale. It's
| expensive, but nowhere near the price of cocaine.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| So... help me understand why it's on the order of $20-30 (or
| more) in my grocery store or via well-known spice merchants
| online?
| JohnFen wrote:
| Just guessing that the price varies hugely depending on
| where in the world you're buying it. I'd expect it to be
| cheaper the closer you are to a saffron-producing nation.
|
| A bit like how, if you're used to how cheap avocados are on
| the US west coast, you can suffer from sticker shock when
| buying them on the east side.
| Iulioh wrote:
| We do produce it in Italy but still costs like
| 5-6.000EUR/kg and sold in less than 1gr packets
|
| Edit:
|
| Seems like the top producer, Iran, does make 160.000
| kg/year.
|
| From the list I found online the sum of the next 9
| countries is less than 20.000kg
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" One of the earliest references to saffron dates to 2300 BCE,
| in_ The Legend of Sargon of Akkad, _a Mesopotamian work that
| describes the birthplace of the founder of the Akkadian empire as
| "city of saffron." "_
|
| This doesn't seem right: _Epic of Gilgamesh_ is the oldest known
| Mesopotamian work of fiction and it 's a more recent ~2,100 BCE
| [0].
|
| The historic _person_ Sargon of Assad lived in the 24th /23rd
| century BCE [1]--are they perhaps confusing his biographical era,
| with the era when (surviving, extant) poetic epics were written
| about him? His Wikipedia entry [1] doesn't seem to mention any
| written works older than 8th century BCE.
|
| edit: I've tracked down [2] what I _think_ is the original source
| of the "city of saffron" quote. It's from an "autobiography" of
| Sargon which seems to be a much, much later (7th century BCE?)
| work of fiction--not a historical autobiography (see the
| introductory discussion starting page 16).
|
| - _" 4. As has already been noted, no such city has been located,
| but its meaning, "a specific azupiru-like spice and medicinal
| plant, is well known. Note, however, the logogram U.HURSAG would
| mean 'Mountain Plant' in Sumerian, which may be related to
| Sargon's supposed origins in the highlands. This herb was also
| used as a potion to produce abortions, which may lend a double
| entendre to this so-called place-name."_
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargon_of_Akkad
|
| [2]
| https://archive.org/details/resgestaesargonis/page/39/mode/2...
| (Joan Goodnick Westenholz, _" Legends of the kings of Akkade :
| The Texts"_ (1997), page 39, footnote 4)
|
| https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/epsd2/cbd/sux/o0024740.html
| (Electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary, ePSD2: "azugna
| [VEGETABLE] (N)")
|
| (footnote: I'll never _not_ be amazed modern web browsers support
| 4,000-year-old writing systems. Look, it 's !)
| jjulius wrote:
| >This doesn't seem right: Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest known
| Mesopotamian work of fiction and it's a more recent ~2,100 BCE
| [0].
|
| Perhaps because _The Legend of Sargon of Akkad_ isn 't fiction,
| it's an autobiography?
|
| Edit: Is this perhaps the autobiography that his Wiki article
| is referring to under "Birth Legend"?
|
| https://www.worldhistory.org/article/746/the-legend-of-sargo...
| perihelions wrote:
| Yeah, but, per your link:
|
| - _" Both pieces today are sometimes classified as belonging
| to the genre of Mesopotamian naru literature - the world's
| first historical fiction - in which a famous figure, usually
| a king, is featured as the main character in a fictional
| work."_
|
| - _" The earliest copy is dated to the 7th century BCE"_
| glitchc wrote:
| Any dates before recorded/written history should be assumed to
| have a large margin of error, on the order of +/-500 years,
| especially true for all dates earlier than 1000 BCE. We don't
| have a precise way of dating. Carbon dating requires longer
| timescales and the writing substrates used (typically stone)
| contain minimal traces.
| wl wrote:
| Gilgamesh stories start showing up circa 2100 BCE. The epic
| proper, a compilation of several of these stories, is newer,
| dating no earlier than 1300 BCE. And while the Gilgamesh
| stories that became the epic date nearly to the point where
| stories started being written down in Mesopotamia, there are
| plenty of other stories that are as old, if not older.
| Gilgamesh is just prominent as the most widely-read work of
| pre-Homeric literature.
| falaki wrote:
| Thanks for digging it up. I can shed more light on the meaning
| of the original word for Saffron. The article mentions Saffron
| comes from Arabic az-za'faran. That word is the Arabicized
| version of an older Persian word: Za-paran (Zayesh-paran),
| which means "causes abortion" (zaa/zayesh --> birth).
|
| The most common source of Saffron in Iran is area in southern
| Khorasan called Ghohistan (from Kohistan) meaning mountainous.
|
| Both of these facts corroborate the Akkadian sources.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I've spoken to many people who have purchased a tiny jar of
| saffron but have no idea how to use it, so here's what I consider
| an excellent starter recipe:
|
| https://wtop.com/lifestyle/2024/01/braised-chicken-with-fenn...
|
| Reprinted from here
| (https://www.177milkstreet.com/recipes/provencal-braised-chic...)
| with permission, and avoids the paywall.
|
| This dish also works just as well with fish (it is based on a
| bouillabaisse, after all). You will definitely taste the saffron!
| cwillu wrote:
| Reminder that recipes do not enjoy copyright protection.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I read somewhere that Saffron is often deliberately contaminated
| with lead.
| hinkley wrote:
| There's an orangish red pigment that is made of lead. Most
| recently there was a turmeric contamination scandal involving
| lead contamination.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Perhaps Chrome Orange or Lead Chromate?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_orange
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_chromate
|
| These colours help with adulterating turmeric
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Here's what I don't get... so here in the US, saffron is
| generally speaking, extremely expensive and rationed carefully by
| cooks. Meanwhile, I watch these cooking videos on YouTube and
| people in villages in places like Azerbaijan are casually
| throwing the equivalent of $10,000 worth of saffron into their
| tea. Granted, I understand places like Iran (spoiler alert: not
| the best relationship with the US) are major producers, so maybe
| it is cheaper in that part of the world, BUT it almost by
| definition is a scarce resource. I do find myself wondering if
| trade issues / foreign relations are a factor in the cost.
| yifanl wrote:
| I'm not saying I don't believe you, but how credible are these
| cooking videos? $10000 of saffron could provide enough flavour
| for easily 6 months worth of tea.
| c22 wrote:
| When I go to Safeway I can find a handful of saffron threads
| suspended in a small glass jar for about $23, or I can find a
| similar thing for $30 at a fancier grocer. Meanwhile, if I go
| to the nearby independent indian grocery store I can get a
| cigarette-pack-sized box of the stuff for about ten bucks.
| While it's definitely not the cheapest spice I don't feel bad
| about liberally using it in my chai recipe and a box usually
| lasts me a couple months.
| hammock wrote:
| Could it be fake, adulterated or poisonous somehow?
| hammock wrote:
| BS to downvote me for this comment. Cheap olive oil is
| counterfeit. Cheap milk, honey and coffee are adulterated
| with fillers. Cheap tumeric is colored with lead oxide
| aagha wrote:
| It's a near certainty that what you're buying at the Indian
| store is fake.
|
| Check out these two sources and maybe run a test?
|
| https://sadafpack.com/blog/how-can-we-distinguish-
| original-s...
|
| https://motherwouldknow.com/how-to-identify-real-saffron-
| avo...
| enlyth wrote:
| A local restaurant where I live has a dish (chili pepper
| squid) where they add a generous amount of saffron to it,
| and I always wondered how they can keep the cost so low.
|
| Now when I looked at the pictures on the website you
| linked, it definitely looks like the fake stuff.
| tekla wrote:
| It's almost definitely fake
| metaphor wrote:
| > _Meanwhile, if I go to the nearby independent indian
| grocery store I can get a cigarette-pack-sized box of the
| stuff for about ten bucks._
|
| Worth noting that saffron adulteration in India is common
| enough that the country's Food Safety and Standards Authority
| disseminates public guidance on how to detect for it at home;
| see serial numbers 46 and 47 here[1].
|
| [1] https://www.fssai.gov.in/cms/checkadulteration.php
| waynesonfire wrote:
| anyone have a saffron chicken recipe they like?
| benced wrote:
| Note that the US does not trade with Iran, the largest producer
| of saffron. Undoubtedly, some saffron in the US is Iranian, just
| ferried via another country for customs reasons but it makes the
| spice here more expensive than it would be otherwise.
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