In This ArticleView AllIn This ArticleThe Golden TicketAn Idea BlossomsSustaining Small FarmsCreating a MarketThings to Consider When Buying Saffron
In This ArticleView All
View All
In This Article
The Golden Ticket
An Idea Blossoms
Sustaining Small Farms
Creating a Market
Things to Consider When Buying Saffron
Bundled against the cold, Claudel “Zaka” Chery and Jette Mandl-Abramson walk the field, plucking the blossoms into baskets and stopping now and then to blow on their bare hands. The flowers are the first signs of life from 180,000 corms, the enlarged stems, that lay dormant under the soil all summer. The harvest from the fall-blooming saffron crocus will last until the temperature stays below freezing. Chery is all too aware that in this cold hollow, harvest time could last a month, or just until tomorrow. Later, at the kitchen table, pulling apart the blossoms to remove the saffron threads, Chery counts each one—361 that day—which he records in a little notebook.
OLIVER PARINI
Jacob Fox
Get the recipe:Saffron Chicken Korma
Saffron’s value, and perhaps a large part of its allure to the human imagination for millennia (one of the oldest depictions of saffron is a 3,000-year-old fresco at the Palace of Minos at Knossos in Crete), comes from its elusive nature. Each blossom lasts 3 to 4 days and produces three tiny scarlet stigmas, which must be separated from the other flower parts and then dried within 24 hours of picking; it takes about 500 of these aromatic threads to produce a single gram. You can do a full day’s work and hold in your palm a harvest weighing less than a hummingbird.
Like most spices, saffron has its cultural niche: in Persia and Arabia, it appears in everything from cocktails to ice cream, even beauty cream and fabric dye. In Mediterranean cuisine, saffron has lent its distinctive woodsy note to bouillabaisse since Roman times, and in India—where it has also long been part of the spice trade—some cooks add it to recipes like biryani, turning layers of rice cooked with spices, vegetables and meat a sunny yellow. Used as much for the rich golden color as the sweet earthy aroma it gives the food, its taste is more atmospheric than assertive, like freshly mown hay drying in the sun with bitter herbs and flowers.
Get the recipe:Bouillabaisse
Native to the Middle East, saffron is typically grown in hot, dry climates and it is harvested for export only in places where hand labor is cheaply available. Around 90% of the world’s saffron is grown in Iran. Spain, Afghanistan and India are also exporters. The U.S. imports roughly 75 tons of saffron a year and farming it domestically has been nearly unheard of since Pennsylvania Dutch settlers grew it in the 1700s (a few still do) and sold it to Spanish colonists in the Caribbean.
“My initial reaction was, ‘That’s a really crazy idea,'” says Skinner. “I didn’t think it would survive the cold.” But if it did, she thought, the fall-bloomingCrocus sativuscould be a high-value crop for vegetable farmers—not requiring a heated greenhouse and hitting at a time of year when an additional revenue stream was welcome. “We envisioned this as a crop to support our small diversified farms,” she explains.
Via her University of Vermont program, Margaret Skinner, a research professor and extension entomologist, supports American saffron farmers.OLIVER PARINI
The outlay of time and money to plant an acre of saffron can be daunting. The corms themselves, which most farms import from specialized growers in Holland, cost around 20 to 40 cents each, which could run to $30,000 for an acre. The first year’s harvest won’t impress anyone, but three years after planting, Skinner estimates, 1 acre ofCrocus sativuscould produce $100,000 of saffron. These are the kind of numbers that UVM’s North American Center for Saffron Research and Development has estimated based on their research to date.
When funding is available the Center donates corms and equipment to farmers for saffron trials, researches different growing and drying methods and organizes an annual conference drawing hundreds—“a wild session of all kinds of different people looking for the new gold rush,” according to one participant. Most influential of all is the center’s SaffronNet—a Listserv with 800 active users, from 25 states and 15 countries, all posting tips and questions on growing saffron.
To harvest their half-acre requires 14 people working up to 14 hours a day. Young people who are attracted to the madcap adventure of picking saffron as an endurance sport come to camp in the fields for a few weeks. They pick at least 40,000 flowers before the intense sun hits the field and wilts them (“they would turn to wet glop,” says Price), then all afternoon in the shade of walnut trees they separate the stigmas from the petals with pollen-stained hands and place the threads into dehydrators. After drying, the saffron is sealed in jars.
Get the recipe:Saffranskaka
Price admits that at least half her customers are unfamiliar with saffron. “They point to the lavender field and ask if that’s the saffron,” she says. Her mission is to spread enthusiasm. She encourages people to “be adventuresome, to try it in everything.” As for the expense—her saffron sells for $75 a gram in a cute jar with a label that reads “Life Is Golden”—she reminds people that a little bit goes a long way. “Three threads of saffron will make a pot of rice,” she says.
Meraki Meadowsin the dust-mote town of New Home, Texas, is a two-family operation where all six kids, ages 7 to 16, are on the website staff page with roles like Executive Flower Smeller and Dirt Quality Analyst. Karl McDonald and his in-laws, the Becks, had 15 acres and started researching a crop that could be profitable without much land or rain, and would “give the kids an activity.” Saffron kept coming to the top of the list. The name they chose for the farm, Meraki, is a Greek word meaning to put yourself into something with heart and soul.
During the fall of 2020 when the pandemic confined them at home, all 10 family members planted 20,000 corms of saffron on a half-acre and got their first harvest a few months later, truly a family effort. “The kids got up to pick before they went to school, then came home and processed after,” McDonald says.
As remote as it is, Meraki Meadows gets few visitors. They sell directly from their website. “Our biggest gap is marketing,” McDonald says. Like Calabash Gardens and Peace and Plenty Farm, they will soon be producing too much saffron to sell it all directly to home cooks; they will need partnerships with companies looking to turn it into value-added products, such as saffron-infused soap, candles or honey, something Peace and Plenty has found a strong market for.
Get the recipe:Red Lentil Soup with Saffron
Shorey recently checked in on Zaka Chery’s crop at Calabash Gardens. “The gauntlet was thrown,” Shorey says. “We have to really work on the demand because they are going to have a ton of saffron next year.” Well, maybe not a ton, but if the weather cooperates, possibly as much as 6 pounds, which translates to 5,400 half-gram jars of the gold spice.
Yes, it’s pricy, so you want to be sure you’re getting what you paid for. Here are some things to consider.
Choose Threads
Skip powdered saffron—it loses flavor more quickly, and it’s easier for it to be adulterated with fillers.
Read
Inspect
It should look like red threads, typically snarled into a jumble. The threads can have variation in color from pure red to a lighter orangy-yellow, which is where the stigma attaches to the style of the flower.
Sniff
It should smell strongly of dried hay and fall leaves.
Buy
Try these sites for American-grown saffron.
Lemonfair Saffron Co;lemonfairsaffron.com
Peace and Plenty Farm;peaceplentyfarm.com
Meraki Meadows;txsaffron.com
Calabash Gardens;calabashgardens.com
Helen Whybrowis a freelance writer and editor-at-large forOrion Magazine.
Was this page helpful?Thanks for your feedback!Tell us why!OtherSubmit
Was this page helpful?
Thanks for your feedback!
Tell us why!OtherSubmit
Tell us why!
