Organic Cumin Ground Powder Standard Jar 50g Steenbergs details and description

Steenbergs Organic Cumin - or jeera - is another classic of the organic storecupboard.  Cumin is one of the oldest and most popular spices in the world.  Organic cumin has a very distinctive, strong flavour that is and important spice (and smell) in Moroccan kitchens and in Mexican cooking. Use Steenbergs organic ground cumin (or organic cumin powder) to Moroccan cooked dishes and salads or in any Mexican chilli dish, most curries. As one of the most popular spices organic cumin can be added to most savoury dishes.

The aroma of Steenbergs Organic Cumin Powder is pungent, warm, earthy, lingering and sweet but with a pleasing bitterness.  The flavour of Steenbergs Organic Cummin Powder is similarly earthy and pungent and slightly bitter.  Cumin powder gives that feeling of the warmth and flavour of traditional curries.

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, but just a pinch of cumin is all your need for a great burger.  At Steenbergs, cumin crops up in most of our spice blends, from organic Mild Curry Powder through to Mexican Chile Powder.  For some further recipe ideas, look at Steenbergs Recipe Pages , or look at Allrecipes or the BBC Recipe Websites.

Steenbergs Organic Cumin Powder form part of the Steenbergs 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.