As The Food Programme explores in ‘Britain's Secret Saffron Story’, the red spice is one of the world’s most expensive ingredients – worth more per ounce than gold.
But what other foods would give the sought-after spice a run for its money? What is it that makes these products so costly? And are they really worth their price tag? Here are a few of Planet Earth’s most expensive foodstuffs. How many have you tried?
1. Saffron
If your rice is luminous yellow, then the chances are it’s been sharing a saucepan with saffron. The spice, nicknamed ‘Red Gold’, is the vivid crimson stigma (or threads) from a crocus flower, and it’s used as a colouring agent in food. Why does something so small cost so much? It is, weight for weight, more expensive than gold itself. The reasons are simple: Saffron crocuses only flower for a week or two a year in the autumn; harvesting the spice is labour intensive (it’s collected and processed by hand); and each small flower has only three stigma which means it takes around two football pitches of crocuses to create a kilogram of saffron. That’s as many as 300,000 flowers!
great article dear.. keep it up.