Saffron is, by a wide margin, the most expensive and the most prized spice in the entire world. It is nicknamed “red gold” for a very good reason. A single gram of high-quality saffron can cost more than ten dollars. This makes it more expensive than some precious metals. This shocking price is not a marketing gimmick. It is the direct result of an incredibly difficult, labor-intensive, and delicate harvesting process. This process has not changed for thousands of years.
The Source of the Spice
Saffron is not a seed or a root. It is the stigma of a small, purple flower called the Crocus sativus. Each flower produces only three tiny, thread-like stigmas. This means that to get just one pound of dried saffron, a farmer must grow and harvest more than 75,000 of these flowers. The yield per plant is incredibly small.
A Difficult, 100% Manual Harvest
No machine can harvest saffron. The entire process must be done by hand. The delicate crocus flowers are small and grow very low to the ground. Workers must painstakingly pick each flower in the early morning. They do this before the sun can wilt the delicate stigmas. This is a back-breaking and very slow-moving job.
The Delicate Extraction Process
After the flowers have been picked, the next phase of the labor begins. Workers must then sit for hours and to carefully extract the three tiny red stigmas from each flower, one by one. This is an incredibly precise and a very tedious task. A worker can spend an entire day of labor and only produce a few grams of the final product.
A Very Short and Risky Harvest Season
The saffron crocus only blooms for a very short, two-to-three-week period in the fall. During this brief window, the entire year’s crop must be harvested. This creates a huge amount of pressure and risk for the farmers. A single, unexpected weather event, like a bad storm or a hard frost, can wipe out the entire harvest and the farmer’s income for the year.
The Rarity of “Red Gold”
The high price of saffron is a direct reflection of the immense human labor that is required to produce it. It is one of the few agricultural products in the modern world that has not been changed by mechanization. Its value comes from the time, the skill, and the sheer number of human hands that are required to get it from the field to your kitchen. It is a true luxury product. It is a spice that is quite literally worth its weight in, well, almost gold.
Have you ever cooked with real saffron? Do you think the high price is worth the unique flavor? Let us know your experience!
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The post The Spice Called “Red Gold”: Why Saffron Is So Expensive? appeared first on Grocery Coupon Guide.
