Saffron is the most important element while preparing sweet delicacies. It adds richness to platter with its exquisite taste and colour. Every strand of saffron is precious as gold so let’s flip the pages of our rich food history to discover the reason of saffron being the most expensive spice.
 
1. Saffron strands are basically the stigmas that are to be plucked from the beautiful lavender coloured flowers. The flower has three maroon stigmas growing from one pistil, and three worthless golden stamens. Only the maroon stigma is valuable.

2. These lavender flowers with saffron stigmas are called Crocus and it grows to 20–30 cm and bears only four flowers.

Source: herbologymanchester

3. Saffron does not reproduce on its own-unlike most other plants; it needs human efforts to nurture the plant. Handling these plants is the most painstaking task.

4. The flower of crocus needs to be handled with gentle care because you pick the strands by hand - you can’t mechanise it. Once you pick the flowers you then have to dissect them to get the stigmas. After getting three stigmas in each flower, they have to be air-dried so the work involved is huge.

So, now you know why people suggest you to use saffron wisely because it’s not just expensive but also difficult to reproduce.

Image source: theearthchild

Information source: food.ndtv

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