Saffron

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Categories: Spices

Cuisines: Spanish, French, Greek/Turkish

Source: Spain

Saffron is the most expensive spice on Earth. This is because of the labour involved in growing and harvesting the spice. Saffron is the red-yellow stigma of the crocus flower and must be hand-picked during short annual flowering seasons. Each flower produces only three stigmas, so it takes approximately 150 flowers to yield just one gram of dry saffron threads. Luckily, very little saffron is needed for cooking. In fact, too much can make food bitter.

Fresh saffron has a distinctive earthy smell and flavour and imparts a bright orange colour to food. Saffron is a characteristic ingredient for a number of traditional dishes like bouillabaisse and paella, as well as many risottos. Try adding a few threads to basmati rice with Indian dishes to add a bit of flavour and turn your rice a beautiful golden colour. When adding saffron to a dish, add to a bit of liquid first to draw out the colour, or grind to a powder if no liquid is being used. Adding early in the cooking process gives more colour, adding late gives more flavour.

Our saffron is from La Mancha, Spain, and is considered by many to be the world's finest saffron. We sell two grades: Mancha and Coupe. Mancha is the grade most widely available in Canada. It is very nice saffron with a rich red colour, but it has a bit of the yellow style attached to the stigmas so it is not quite as strong as the higher grade. Coupe saffron is the very best Spanish saffron. It has been hand-selected to include only the finest stigmas, and all of the yellow style has been cut away. We sell our saffron in one-gram tins.

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