Gadenin日本語Get the appThe harvest is a daily morning job for two or three weeks
Saffron flowers open in the morning and fade fast. The three red stigmas inside are at their best on the day the flower opens, and they lose color and aroma quickly once the flower has been open in sun and wind, or once rain has got into it. So harvesting is not a single event: it is a short walk over the bed every morning for the two to three weeks that the block is in flower, taking whatever has opened that day.
Pick the whole flower rather than trying to pull threads out of a standing bloom. Pinch the flower tube low down and lift; the flower comes away cleanly and the stigmas stay intact. Collect them in a shallow open container, not a bag, and take them straight indoors.
Only the three red stigmas are saffron. The three yellow stamens in the same flower have no flavor and dilute the crop. Discard them, along with the pale style below the point where it splits into three.
Telling saffron crocus from the poisonous look-alike
Autumn crocus, also sold as meadow saffron or Colchicum, flowers at the same season, in the same lilac-pink, and is poisonous in every part. Every year people are harmed by mistaking the two. Never harvest from a plant you did not plant yourself, and check the flower structure before anything reaches a kitchen.
| Feature | Saffron crocus (edible) | Autumn crocus, Colchicum (poisonous) |
|---|---|---|
| Stamens | Three, with yellow anthers | Six, with yellow anthers |
| Style and stigmas | One style splitting into three long deep red threads that hang out of the flower | Three pale, whitish or yellowish styles, never deep red |
| Leaves at flowering | Narrow grassy leaves appearing with or just after the flowers | No leaves at all at flowering; broad leaves come up in spring |
| Flower size | Small, on a slender tube close to the ground | Noticeably larger and more goblet-shaped |
| Underground part | A rounded corm in a fibrous netted tunic | A larger, lopsided corm with a brown papery skin |
Separating and drying the threads
Do the separating the same morning you pick, at a table indoors, with the flowers in front of you. It takes a few minutes for a normal day's picking and is oddly pleasant work. Drying immediately afterwards is what fixes the color and develops the aroma; threads left damp in a heap go brown and flat.
- Open the flower and find the split Peel the petals back with your thumbs. Inside, the three red threads join into a single pale stalk. Follow them down to where the red stops.
- Pinch off the red section only Take the three stigmas together, just below the point where the red begins, and pull them free. A short pale tail of a few millimeters is normal and harmless; a long yellow stalk is dead weight.
- Spread them out in a single layer Lay the threads on a sheet of baking paper or a fine mesh with none touching. A crowded heap dries unevenly and the center stays damp.
- Dry gently and quickly Warm air at 110 to 120F (43-49C) for fifteen to thirty minutes is enough in an oven on its lowest setting with the door ajar, or in a dehydrator. Air drying in a warm dark airy room works too and takes a day or two. Do not exceed 130F (55C); scorched saffron turns brittle and pale and loses aroma.
- Store airtight and dark, then wait The threads are dry when they snap rather than bend. Put them in a small airtight jar in a dark cupboard. Flavor improves over the first month, so saffron used straight from the dryer tastes weaker than the same batch a few weeks later.
The yield, honestly
One flower gives three threads. Roughly one hundred and fifty flowers dry down to about a gram, which is a generous pinch, and a hundred flowers give a good deal less than that. A first-year planting of fifty decent corms might produce fifty to eighty flowers over the season, which is enough to season two or three dishes. This is normal and not a sign of failure.
The scale only makes sense over years. A block left undisturbed multiplies, and by the third or fourth autumn the same square yard can be giving several times the first year's count. If you want a usable quantity annually, plan on a few hundred corms and a bed you can walk around, rather than expecting more from a small planting.
Counting, weighing and writing it down
Keep a tally of flowers picked per day through the flowering weeks and weigh the finished dried batch at the end. Note the date of the first and last flower. Those numbers are the only reliable way to see whether the planting is improving, and the daily tally shows you the shape of the season, which tends to be a slow start, a peak in the middle week, and a long thin tail. Knowing that shape tells you which mornings you genuinely cannot skip next year.