When we think of the freezer, usually the long-term storage of food such as meat, fish, and chicken comes to our mind. Not too many people think of freezing saffron. Yes, the golden spice can be kept in your freezer, but you need to observe a few tips to guard the most expensive spices in the world.
Imagine the world before the refrigerator. Today, this device has become just one of the routine appliances in the kitchen. Keeping food for a long time has made life much easier for us than before. Do you want to make the inner space of your freezer a bit luxurious? Saffron can do it.
Why freezing Saffron?
Like many spices, saffron enjoys a long lifespan (at least four years), if you keep it away from moisture and sunlight. You can easily keep it in airtight containers, while their lid are tied tight in a cupboard away from the stove or oven.
Although the heat, steam, and odor rising from cooking activities caress your nose, they play a destructive role toward spice, especially when comes to saffron, and significantly reduce the lifespan of your spices. As a result, no need to freeze saffron. If you may, for example, brew some saffron and then realize that that amount is more than you need to prepare a meal. If so, you’d better pour the precious rest of your brewed red elixir into a plastic container in the freezer for using saffron in the next meal (no more than three months in this case.)
Or, for instance, if you live in a hot country and fear your saffron to be exposed to the sunlight and ruined, you can save it in the corner of your refrigerator. Or, take the case that you have bought a large amount of the magical spice, and it may take more than three years to consume. Anyway, putting sensitive, expensive dried threads of your golden spice in the freezer will save them for a longer time, even one year more, provided that you follow some tips.
Avoiding moisture
Water is the essence of life, but speaking of spices, it could be a big threat to their life shell. Therefore, you can imagine how dangerous the environment of the freezer could be.
To impede moisture from infiltrating your saffron, the best recommendation is to use again an airtight plastic container. Also, wrapping it in aluminum foil is another option. The latter helps photophobe threads of your precious spice stay away from light, as usually we open the freezer door several times during a week. You must be alert though, since aluminum like any metal has a high degree of thermal conduction, you’d better put the saffron in a zipped plastic and then wrap the aluminum around it so that the texture of your delicate threads is not damaged due to contact with the aluminum.
Pressure? Give them just a space!
Pressure is one of the enemies of golden spice stains. Be careful that the package of saffron that you prepared to put in the freezer is not placed under other food packages. You know that even a few threads are enough to give flavor to your meal. So you should be able to add saffron threads to your foods one by one. If the saffron is tightly under pressure, its strings stick together, you will have trouble separating them for use in a meal. Therefore, when you freeze saffron, you should give a little space to its slender threads in a larger box so that they can sit together comfortably.
In addition to crushing the stigmas, and spoiling the opportunity of decorative ability of your crimson red threads on your food, the pressure may cause extraction of the odor of saffron. This makes your whole freezer space replete with its aroma, which is, per se, not bad, it may not suit your taste.
Conclusion
Queen of Flowers is honored to serve you with the best saffron gathered selectively from Khorasan province– the paradise of saffron. We guarantee that our saffron threads preserve their high quality for 4 years and even more, if you store them in a cool, dark, and dry corner of your cupboard in your kitchen. Generally, it is a rational way to freeze saffron, especially if you live in hot humid weather or your calculation was wrong, as in case you brewed too much saffron for one meal.
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