So, I’m off to Granada at the end of May for a conference (oh the hardships I endure ), and my mum has already put in her request that I bring back some decent good quality Spanish saffron. Together with exhortations to make sure I don’t get fleeced whilst buying it. Now, what I understand is as follows:
Saffron is graded from I – IV with I being the highest quality and IV being the lowest.
Saffron should be a deep red colour and smell something like hay.
Cheap saffron = bad and has probably been adulterated with something.
What else should I be looking for? Does anyone have any reccomendations where I should get the saffron from or anything like that?
Real paella is done with saffron and does not include sand as one of its ingredients. Beach paella is done with tasteless coloring and contains between 5-30% sand, in weight.
Oh, Angua: if you want to visit the Alhambra, you need to book it in advance.
My question is the cost and effort and for saffron really worth it? Salt, cinnamon and the like I could see, but does saffron really taste that ungodly good that its worth this-
Saffron crocuses bloom within a narrow window spanning one or two weeks. Approximately 150 flowers yield 1 g of dry saffron threads; to produce 12 g of dried saffron (72 g freshly harvested), 1 kg of flowers are needed (1 lb for 0.2 oz of dried saffron). On average, one freshly picked flower yields 0.03 g of fresh saffron, or 0.007 g of dried saffron.
A pound of dry saffron (0.45 kg) requires 50,000–75,000 flowers, the equivalent of a football field’s area of cultivation. Some forty hours of frenetic day-and-night labour are needed to pick 150,000 flowers. Upon extraction, stigmas are dried quickly and (preferably) sealed in airtight containers. Saffron prices at wholesale and retail rates range from US$500/pound to US$5,000/pound (US$1100–US$11,000 per kilogram)—equivalent to £2,500/€3,500 per pound or £5,500/€7,500 per kilo.
Cheers for that info! I know that the conference organisers are organising a tour for us, but I’m fairly sure that if Bonzer can’t make it for that, he’ll still want to go, so I’ll look into that.
Well, the amounts of saffron you use are absolutely tiny, much less than salt, sugar or pepper.
In Spanish cooking, you should be able to tell all the ingredients apart. When I eat things from some other places, there’s a taste that’s completely dominant; often I know which is the base (rice, potatoes, meat) because of its texture, but the taste has been obliterated by a Taste Bomb; different parts of the dish have different textures but not a different taste. With Spanish cooking, you should be able to blind-taste a dish and tell what’s gone into it; each bit feels and tastes different. The saffron is another note added to the symphony; some of the other ingredients absorb it more, some less, but the whole changes from doing it with no saffron to doing it with a tiny little weeny bit.
I don’t have access to Mom’s kitchen, but her saffron can is maybe 10g and it has lasted since before I was born (she doesn’t cook her saffron recipes often). Talking of saffron in terms of pounds is like talking about rubies in terms of metric tons.
Any advice on growing it? I bought some bulbs and they bloomed the second year, but only a few even came up this last year, with no flowers.
Should it be kept completely separate from other growing things so that it gets no watering when it dies down in the summer? Do I need to shade it when the temperature is over 100F?
Just this past weekend my wife added it to rice. I don’t know how much she used, but as mentioned by earlier posters, it isn’t much. It made the rice a lovely golden color and, well, spiced up the flavor. (As I guess spices are meant to do.)
I love saffron, but it is relatively expensive. I got a teensy amount for, like, $10. It has lasted a year, but I don’t use it very often.
For the person who asked for recipes, this is how I generally use it:
In a skillet I put in olive oil, chopped garlic, chopped onions, and chopped fresh tomatoes (large chunks…I like large chunks) and a chopped Quorn cutlet (that’s fake chicken, obviously you can use real chicken)
After that’s cooked for a few minutes, I add a pinch of saffron, some smoked paprika, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper.
I add all of this to a bit of rice.
Yumification ensues.
I have found that things with the saffron+smoked paprika combo go really well with pretty much any Spanish red wine.
Now and then I make a “tapas” buffet for me and my husband, and one of the dishes is always saffron garlic shrimp. It’s super-easy to make:
Peel and devein some shrimp. Put a pinch of saffron threads in about 2 tablespoons of chicken broth and warm it for a few seconds in the microwave. Saute the shrimp in olive oil with a bit of chopped garlic until the shrimp are just done; transfer them to a serving dish, salt them to taste and drizzle the saffron broth over them. Add a few drops of lemon juice. Toss the shrimps about to coat them and serve them at room temp. Sprinkle them with chopped parsley if you like; the green will look pretty against the saffron-stained vivid yellow shrimp.
Any kind of “yellow rice and chicken” seasoning mix is probably mostly turmeric with maybe a hint of saffron. But you can get saffron (at any supermarket) in the form of whole dried stamens; good or bad, it can’t be adulterated. To cook with it, you take a pinch, fold it inside a square of brown paper, and let the square rest a while on the lid of the cooking pot; the steam will toast it, and then you can crumble it into the pot. (Got that tip from Clarita’s Cocina, by Clarita Garcia.)
I just toss my saffron in directly to the dish at hand.
Monday night I made artichoke pasta sauce.
chop an onion and garlic and fry it in oil.
Throw in a few strands of saffron, salt & pepper.
splash in a half-glass of white wine. let it reduce
throw in some cream and stock… about a cup. more cream is better, but watch the temperature.
Add your artichokes and stir.
OK, I know about proper saffron versus saffron powder, (and I won’t allow “saffron” powder in my kitchen ) and I cook with it a lot. But I’ve read about thread saffron being adulterated with either lower grade saffron (and being sold off as high grade saffron) or being adulterated with silk thread dyed to look like saffron. I really want to know how to avoid spot sorts of things. The saffron I have in my kitchen at the moment claims that its “genuine garden taj mahal saffron” from Spain. It smells sort of grassy/hay like but isn’t a deep uniform deep red; there are strands of yellow mixed in, which I understand are other parts of the crocus statement and “inferior” to just the pure saffron?
Put a couple of cups of dry white wine, a cup of water and a cup of sugar into a saucepan. Add a big pinch of saffron and the peeled-off zest of a lemon. Peel a couple of comice pears (those are those narrow pointy brown ones, right?), cut them in halves and scoop out the cores. Poach them in the wine/sugar mixture until they are just tender, maybe 10-15 minutes? They’re done when you can pierce them easily with a toothpick. Remove them and let them and the syrup cool separately, then return them to the syrup and put it all the fridge to chill. The pears will be beautifully stained yellow and the syrup is addictive.
If you want the syrup thicker, boil it after removing the pears until it is reduced down. Then chill it.
), and my mum has already put in her request that I bring back some decent good quality Spanish saffron. Together with exhortations to make sure I don’t get fleeced whilst buying it. Now, what I understand is as follows:
) and I cook with it a lot. But I’ve read about thread saffron being adulterated with either lower grade saffron (and being sold off as high grade saffron) or being adulterated with silk thread dyed to look like saffron. I really want to know how to avoid spot sorts of things. The saffron I have in my kitchen at the moment claims that its “genuine garden taj mahal saffron” from Spain. It smells sort of grassy/hay like but isn’t a deep uniform deep red; there are strands of yellow mixed in, which I understand are other parts of the crocus statement and “inferior” to just the pure saffron?