Saffron Rice

Here is a tip for purchasing saffron. Try an authentic Indian grocery store, if you have one in your area. They sell saffron in large tins - something like one ounce for $30 or $40. It sounds like a lot but when you compare it to the half-dozen threads you get in a normal supermarket blister pack, it works out a lot cheaper in the long run. I pretty much always add saffron to my rice, and I don't have to be stingy with it. I'm still on the first box after a year or so.

The Indian grocery stores typically are a good source for spices in general. They sell in large quantity packaging, and the price is right. Once, they had a two for one sale on turmeric. It was in 1 pound bags. Now, what am I going to do with 2 pounds of turmeric? Trade it with friends I guess...

An ironic note: In this case, if you can get saffron cheap enough, you don't really need the turmeric as it's in the recipe to provide additional yellow color. On the other hand, turmeric isn't that strong a spice so you can put it in practically everything and have a nice yellow color.

Have you found the pre-ground Indian grocery spices in cello packs to be fresh enough? They seem so cheap that it's hard to believe.

So far I have found them entirely satisfactory, perhaps because they turn over the inventory frequently. And, in some cases, there are no alternatives (like kolanji - black onion seed).

But, the spices are not as fancy as the common grocery-store items. For example, their cinnamon is not in nice perfect sticks - rather, it tends to be in lots of randomly shaped pieces of bark. But it tastes fine.

As with anything, your mileage and expectations may vary. But, the saffron I bought sure seems to be top quality, and that is the really pricy one.