The tin that is cheaper per gram and still a waste

At two saffron meals a month, a 0.5 gram jar is about five pinches. That is roughly two and a half months. A 4 gram jar is about forty pinches, which is closer to a year and a half. A one-ounce tin is on the order of 280 pinches. At that pace you would still be opening it years from now.

Saffron keeps its color longer than its smell. In a closed jar, in the dark, off the stove, plan to use it within a year of opening. After that it can still stain rice and still taste thin. The ounce tin wins the gram price on the sticker and then loses the aroma, unless saffron is a weekly habit or the tin is going to a kitchen that cooks for a crowd.

How to spend the money

• First jar: 0.5 gram of whole threads from a named place. You are buying an education.
• Second jar, if the first pot smelled like hay and honey: 4 grams, and a plan to cook it.
• The ounce: a restaurant, a household that cooks saffron every week, or a gift for someone who already does.
• A holiday tin for a household that uses saffron twice a year: skip it. Give the half-gram and a note that says to bloom it.

There is another cheap-looking offer: powder, and very low prices from a seller who will not name a place. Price that only against other powders, and expect that some of them are a different plant. The warm-water test and the shape of a real stigma are on Saffron Threads.

Buy the amount you will finish while it still smells like itself.

Storage belongs to the cooking desk, and it is short. Airtight, dark, cool. A clear jar in a sunny window is a display, and the saffron pays for the display with its aroma.