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Where Can I Buy Saffron?

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Listen. I need to buy some saffron for a little recipe I'm whipping up. Anybody know where I can buy some in Sheffield? I tried that international supermarket on John Street but they had sod all. It was a reyt wasted journey and I fell off my bike twice because I spent the afternoon in The Brown Bare getting sloshed.

Edited by Edward Vimto

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Tesco or Sainsburys sell it in the spice jar section, Swartz are about £4 for a tiny amount.

Maybe some world food shops may do it cheaper?

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Waitrose and Ocado definitely have it. With saffron it is, unfortunately, a case of 'if it's cheap, it may not be saffron' because it's such an expensive ingredient. The number of fakes is astonishing, and if you're going to use a fake ingredient then you may as well just include some food colouring in your dish instead.

 

If it's powder instead of strands, that's over 50/50 odds that it's not saffron. If you take one strand and drop it into water and the deep colour washes off the strands, that's not saffron either. If you put one strand on your tongue and it tastes sweet or anything other than bitter, that's just coloured sweetcorn husk.

 

Any decent saffron will be quite a lot for a packet that has very little in, but that's your choice with the most expensive spice in the world. If you want the perfumed saffron taste in your dish, there's only one way to get it.

 

Looking at Waitrose and Ocado, the best price for Waitrose is their Cooks Ingredients one, which is £2 for 0.4g, and for Ocado it's £5.99 for 1g of Belazu category 1 Spanish saffron.

 

Clearly, category 2 will be less expensive, but not by much. If it's in packets bigger than a gram or so, then it's very likely to be a fake I'm afraid.

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Waitrose and Ocado definitely have it. With saffron it is, unfortunately, a case of 'if it's cheap, it may not be saffron' because it's such an expensive ingredient. The number of fakes is astonishing, and if you're going to use a fake ingredient then you may as well just include some food colouring in your dish instead.

 

If it's powder instead of strands, that's over 50/50 odds that it's not saffron. If you take one strand and drop it into water and the deep colour washes off the strands, that's not saffron either. If you put one strand on your tongue and it tastes sweet or anything other than bitter, that's just coloured sweetcorn husk.

 

Any decent saffron will be quite a lot for a packet that has very little in, but that's your choice with the most expensive spice in the world. If you want the perfumed saffron taste in your dish, there's only one way to get it.

 

Looking at Waitrose and Ocado, the best price for Waitrose is their Cooks Ingredients one, which is £2 for 0.4g, and for Ocado it's £5.99 for 1g of Belazu category 1 Spanish saffron.

 

Clearly, category 2 will be less expensive, but not by much. If it's in packets bigger than a gram or so, then it's very likely to be a fake I'm afraid.

 

Thank you.

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Found this thread by accident, but I know that you can buy saffron in Tesco on the Wicker.

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