Organic Cumin Seed Standard Jar - 40g Steenbergs details and description

Steenbergs Organic Cumin - jeera - is one of the musts of everybody's spice cupboard.  Organic cumin is also known as white cumin or cummin and is one of the oldest and most popular spices in the world.  It has a distinctive smokey, earthy taste. Steenbergs organic cumin seeds are key ingredient in curries.  Steenbergs organic cumin seeds are 5mm in length, tapered at both ends, slightly curved.  Steenbergs organic cumin seeds range in colour from pale brown to khaki and have a dullish looking colour to them.  Each organic cumin seed has fine ridges along its length and a hair like tail.  The aroma of organic cumin is pungent, warm, earthy, lingering and sweet, while the flavour of organic cumin is pungent, warming, earthy and slightly - but pleasantly - bitter.

Suggested uses:  add Steenbergs organic cumin to a variety of dishes, from curries (where it is a key ingredient) to chillis. It's delicious in vegetable casseroles and is fantastic with cabbage, just throw a few seeds on after cooking.  For an extra special treat, make your own fresh organic cumin powder by toasting some Steenbergs organic cumin seeds and crushing them in a pestle and mortar.

Cumin plants, Cuminum cyminum, are small, delicate looking annuals with slender branched stems that grow to 60cm high (24 inches), which somehow do not seem quite right for such an earthy, robustly flavoured spice.  Because of their weakness, the stems are weighed down by the cumin fruit that follow the tiny, pink flowers.  Cumin leaves are deep green, frond-like and divided into long, narrow segments similar to fennel leaves.  Cumin seeds are 4-5mm in length (¼ inch).  Cumin seeds are pretty straight with only a slight curve, thin at 1-2mm (⅛ inch) thick, with a colour that ranges from a pale grey-brown through to a khaki.  If you look closely, each seed has 9 fine ridges running along its length and a hair-like, tail or flagella that is 2mm (⅛ inch) long at one end.  Cumin plants are harvested for the seeds when the plant has finished flowering and before the ripe fruits fall.  The stems are scythed down, then hung in the shade to dry, or sometimes just cut and left to dry.  They are threshed then rubbed to remove most of the fine flagella tails.  The aroma of cumin seeds are pungent, warm, earthy, lingering and sweet, with the earthiness the most predominant aroma and flavour.  To these aromas, the flavour profile has a slightly bitter warmth, which can sometimes become rather too bitter.  For more information on cumin, have a shufti of Gernot Katzers Spice Pages or Wikipedia.

Cumin has a very distinctive earthy warmth, which is often overlayed with a nutty character through dry roasting.  Cumin is used extensively in Middle Eastern cuisine and is characteristic of Indian curries, but is also found in Mexican dishes and I think it works really well in a homemade burger.  At Steenbergs, cumin crops up in most of our spice blends, from organic Mild Curry Powder through to Mexican Chile Powder.  Cumin are fabulous with tomatoes in salsas or sauces, for example tomato, cumin with some paprika is a mainstay of the Steenberg Family kitchen.  For some further recipe ideas, look at Steenbergs Recipe Pages  or look at Allrecipes or the BBC Recipe Websites.

Steenbergs Organic Cumin Seeds form part of the Steenbergs UK range of over 400 organic spices, blends, bakery ingredients, peppers, herbs and flavoured sugars. For your local stockist please click on "Where to see us", or ring us to chat about spices or cooking in general, call 01765 640 088 or email enquiries@steenbergs.co.uk.

Spice - season - savour (sustainably) with Steenbergs.