A short and sweet guide to the world's most expensive spice.
Also known as the "sunshine spice", saffron as one usually sees it, are the removed stigmas of the crocus sativus or the saffron flower. Saffron is mainly grown in Iran, Afghanistan, Kashmir (northern India), Spain and bit in Morocco and southern Italy. While generally Iranian saffron is considered as the best, only do the connoisseurs know that the rare Kashmir saffron - priced around 25% more than the best from Iran and constituting a mere 1% of the global produce, is it strongest and most potent strain of saffron.
The pictures below present the flower and the final saffron as one gets it.
The saffron flowers are plucked during harvest season, usually the month of October until mid-November when the flowers are in full bloom.
After plucking, the pistils are removed from each flower - a laborious manual process. It takes around 150 hand-plucked and hand-sorted flowers to obtain 1 gram of saffron.
The following picture presents the pistil of a saffron flower. The crimson part, the one with most of the aroma, colour and healthy goodness, is separated by hand to obtain the red saffron strands which is generally how one sees saffron. The crimson red section is the stigma, also known as Mogra/Mongra in Kashmir or Sargol in Iran.
Once the crimson-red section or the saffron stigma is separated, the final, pure, hand-separated saffron threads are ready to be packed and are purchased by customers via brick-and-mortar and online stores.
To know of different types of saffron and how to quickly determine which saffron is the best and purest, do read the next in this series "Know your saffron (part 2 of 2)".
In the interim, you may explore Aagur's exclusive Grade-A Kashmir saffron from a single-origin plantation in Pampore, Kashmir.