All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Saffron comes from a particularly lovely purple crocus that blooms in the fall and grows close to the ground. The crocus’ stigma and the style—which, if you’ve retained your eighth grade biology, you know are part of the female reproductive system of the flower—are a brilliant crimson. When dried, they impart a complex, musky, honeyed flavor and bold yellow hue to dishes like tachin, biryani, risotto Milanese, shrikhand, and Lussebullar.
While some spices are expensive because they only grow in specific climates—vanilla beans, for example, only thrive within 10 to 20 degrees of the equator—saffron crocuses aren’t a particularly finicky crop. Instead, saffron’s high price can be attributed to the extremely labor intensive nature of harvesting and processing. The flowers must be harvested by hand before dawn, and the stigmas must be carefully plucked from the blossoms, each of which harbors only three threads. A single pound of saffron is made up of seventy thousand flowers.
Saffron is cultivated in the United States—you can even grow your own!—but the majority is from regions where saffron is part of the culinary tradition and labor is inexpensive, like Kashmir, Afghanistan, and Iran. Iran is by far the world’s largest producer, but for decades the country has suffered under economic sanctions. While previous versions of those sanctions by the U.S. government authorized the importation of products from Iran with cultural value, like Persian rugs and food, the current regulations make no such exemption. If Iranian saffron farmers want to reach American markets, they must rely on middlemen to funnel their crop through other countries, and often saffron labeled as Spanish or Moroccan is actually of Iranian origin. (According to the Spanish farmer’s union, only one percent of Spanish saffron is actually grown in Spain.)
Many Iranian Americans maintain a personal supply of Iranian saffron either from their own travels or through friends and family. “Although you can’t import saffron for sale in the United State, there is a statutory exemption that allows you to bring saffron back from Iran when you travel there for personal use,” says Shahrzad Noorbaloochi, a lawyer who specializes in trade and commerce law. But like sanctions regulations in general, even the laws governing gifts and goods for personal use are intentionally murky and vague in order to achieve over-compliance.
If you don’t have a personal hook-up, it is possible, if not strictly legal, to find it in the United States. You can look in Persian grocery stores (look for deep red threads labeled “negin” or “super negin” that you might even be able to smell through the packaging) or seek out options online. Recommending a particular brand or website or store here, however, could put them at risk. “Currently in the U.S., you cannot import food that originates from Iran, and that includes obtaining it from a third party country,” says Erich Ferrari, a sanctions lawyer who is the former president of the Iranian American Bar Association. “The government is not going to go after everybody, but calling out a particular company could expose them to danger.”
The stated goal of the sanctions against Iran may be to inflict pain upon the government, but in practice, it is average Iranian citizens—like the producers of goods like saffron and pistachios and Persian rugs—who bear the burden. “Say you’re a small farmer and you want to sell to India,” explains Negar Mortazavi, a journalist and political commentator. “You need to ship it, you need insurance, you need a payment to a bank. If any of those steps touch a U.S. company or financial institution, it’s banned.” Sanctions against saffron benefit neither American consumers nor farmers in Iran, and restrictions on products so intertwined with cultural identity impact far more than the economy alone. “Consider the psychological consequences,” says Mortazavi. “It comes to a point where it feels like your identity is being censored.”
Iranian saffron is grown in the Eastern part of the country, particularly Khorasan Razavi Province, and this growing region straddles the border with Afghanistan. While it is with regret that we cannot recommend a specific Iranian saffron company without potentially endangering the individuals behind it, we can point to an Afghan-owned brand operating just across the border in Western Afghanistan. The saffron industry presents opportunities in a country that has endured decades of conflict, including 20 years of war led by U.S. forces. Afghanistan has an estimated 2 million widows, largely as a result of that war, and although the work is seasonal and painstaking, processing saffron is traditionally one of the few jobs available to women with limited formal education.
Twenty-seven-year-old Mohammad Salehi grew up in Herat Province in a family that farmed wheat, potatoes, and saffron. For three and a half years he served as a translator for the U.S. Army, but after he and his family received repeated death threats from the Taliban, Salehi sought asylum in the United States. He found it difficult to find work. “As an immigrant who speaks English as a second language, people sometimes think you’re not smart,” says Salehi. “So I decided to start my own business and tell my own story. I want people to know that there’s more to my country than war.”
Heray Spice imports saffron from a cooperative of 25 farming families from two villages in Herat Province. Salehi knows them all personally, and his company pays on average $400-$500 more per kilo than local traders. He also invests a portion of Heray’s profits in local education. “When I was a boy, every year my family would put half of the income from their saffron crop towards my education,” says Salehi. “I want to help the children of farmers who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to go to school.”
Editor’s note: We amended this article to give more context to the effect of U.S. sanctions on Iranian saffron and of U.S. military occupation on people living on both sides of the Iran-Afghanistan border. We have focused our product recommendations to reflect this.