What is saffron?

Saffron is the name of the saffron pistil, a flower that grows in places with hot and dry climates like Iran, Greece, Morocco, and Kashmir. The saffron flower blooms only once a year for a few weeks from late October to early November, requiring producers to focus on harvesting quickly. Each saffron flower has only four flowers, each flower has three pistils, so it takes 11,000 to 17,000 saffron flowers to produce 1 kg of the final product. Limited production, picky in the cultivation and harvesting, demand always exceeds supply, pushing the price of real saffron to a sky-high price of nearly $10,000 per kilogram, making it one of the most expensive ingredients in the world.