Touted as being the world’s most expensive spice, Saffron is an ingredient that is both intriguing and just a little bit intimidating to work with. We spoke with Gamila MacRury from Gamila at Beechworth to find out just how to work with it, as well as what exactly goes into producing the thread-like spice.

Can you share a bit about yourself, and the journey to creating Gamila at Beechworth?

I’m an engineer by trade and bought 12 acres in Beechworth as a 24-year-old. I then needed to figure out how to earn money off it. I chose table olives and saffron, as both are niche products that do not need a lot of land area to be effective.

We have 13 different varieties of olives, with eight main table varieties. We use a slow traditional fermentation process, and co ferment our olives with estate grown and locally sourced flavours, whether that be saffron and lemon myrtle or yuzu and garlic. The fermentation process takes a minimum of 18 months for our large green varieties, with three years needed for a Ligurian style.

After realising that saffron was poorly understood in the market, and that is it very hard to compete price-wise with Iran, who produces 90 per cent of the world’s saffron, we diversified into food manufacture as a way of both using our saffron and demonstrating a broader range of uses.

For example, we produce a Saffron Extract, which reduces the required preparation time of using saffron, and allows one to use it like vanilla extract. We also produce Bergamot and Saffron Curd, Pickled Cherries and an Egyptian Dukkha, which utilises a saffron ghee we make in house.

We are currently 15 years into our farming journey, and about eight years since releasing our first product. As I like to say, you can’t rush flavour!

Saffron threads

What in particular drew you to producing saffron?

We’re plant people in our family. We’ve been growing plants both commercially and domestically for many generations.

I bought 100 saffron corms before the property even settled, simply thinking they would be suited to the climate. I had definitely never consciously used or eaten saffron, I just thought “they’d do ok”.

Starting small 15 years ago has given me the chance to explore how to grow it successfully, but also to truly understand its culinary value, and how to best utilise one of the most expensive ingredients in the world.

What is involved in saffron production, such as harvest, growing, processing?

Saffron is an autumn flowering crocus. Flowers emerge every day for about four weeks between late April and May. They are a gorgeous purple colour and have three red stigmas, which are the female part of the flowers.

It takes approximately 200,000 flowers to produce 1kg of dried saffron stigmas or threads.

During peak season we pick twice a day, as the flowers emerge that quickly, and they need to be picked before they are fully open as they start losing aroma that quickly. The flowers are picked in the paddock and then taken into the processing shed, where the stigmas are stripped and separated from the petals and pollen. They are then dried to approximately 8-10 per cent moisture.

Once the saffron is harvested, it is then aged for a period of time to get the best combination of colour, flavour and aroma.

What does a typical day on the farm look like?

Our crazy time is autumn, where we are juggling both olive and saffron harvest. Luckily, saffron flowers don’t get going until the sun hits them, so we don’t have early starts.

First thing is down to the saffron patch to see how many flowers are likely to come up for the day. There is no ability to plan saffron harvest, it needs to be assessed every day. If the night has been clear and cold, there will probably be lots of flowers, if it’s been overcast and mild, then there will be less flowers.

Once I know how big a picking day there is, I message the local picking and plucking ladies, letting them know when and how many pickers I need and what time the pluckers can start. It takes twice as long to remove the stigmas as it does to pick the flowers in the patch. So we usually start picking somewhere between 8-10am depending on the flower quantity and then the pluckers start somewhere between 10 and 11, which works well for the parents that are juggling school drop offs.

On flush days, we’ll do two main picks, one in the morning and then an afternoon pick aiming to get out of the paddock by about 3pm. This allows the bees, which get put to sleep by the saffron flower compounds, time to wake back up and get home to the hive before it gets too cold. All flowers must be plucked the day they are picked, so on big flush days, plucking will finish sometime after 7pm, on really big days it is closer to 10pm.

Once harvest is finished, weeding starts. Saffron hates competition, so when they’re growing over the winter season, they need to be kept weed free.

Freshly picked flowers

What is something about saffron that may surprise some readers?

Most recipes that refer to using saffron – and cooking shows – do not use saffron ‘properly’. Saffron must always be ground and soaked. If it isn’t you get approximately a 5 per cent release of the distinctive flavour and colour compounds. Which for something that is so expensive, feels like a significant waste.

Saffron’s three main compounds, Crocin (colour), Picrocrocin (flavour), Safranal (aroma) all change as the produce ages. When saffron is first harvested it will have the most crocin, but will have basically no flavour, as it ages the crocin becomes picrocrocin. Safranal is a very fragile volatile, the packaging is critical to ensuring there is minimal safranal loss, these volatiles are why saffron loves fats, as it allows the honey, toasty hay characteristics something to bind to.

Picrocrocin is very bitter, medicinal and iodiney. Generally you don’t want to taste saffron, but like salt, it rounds a dish out and makes it generally delicious.

When it comes to baking with saffron, what should bakers keep in mind?

When it comes to using saffron in baking, people probably think of it as similar to vanilla, ie it imparts a distinctive flavour. It can do that, but it is better to use it more like salt, where you don’t taste the salt, but if you leave it out, the item will be lacking flavour.

Saffron works in a similar fashion in that it is a flavour enhancer, bringing forward both savoury and sweet and adding complexity. However, similar to vanilla, getting full release out of your saffron threads is critical.

You would never use a vanilla bean whole. You would always split it, scrape the seeds out, and then seep the whole lot in milk. With saffron you should always grind it in a mortar and pestle first, if you don’t, you only get approximately 5 per cent release. It grinds best with sugar, but salt can be used as well. This finely ground saffron mix can then be added straight into coulis, custards, icing mixes etc, if it’s going into pastry, it still needs dissolving, ideally in a fat-based solution such as milk, cream.

Saffron has a bunch of compounds that bind to fats, so cream is its best friend.

What’s your favourite way to eat saffron?

In EVERYTHING! Saffron makes flavours pop. I use our five drops of our Saffron Extract in my banana smoothie, it gets used in scrambled eggs, salads when the tomatoes are lacking flavour, meat marinades etc. At the end of the day, I use it like salt, everything gets a few drops.