Steenbergs Organic Cumin Ground

Steenbergs Organic Cumin Ground is a kitchen store cupboard classic. Cumin has an earthy warmth that’s mildly bitter. Cumin is essential to Indian and Moroccan cooking, but also is great with meats and vegetables in European and Mediterranean cookery.

Steenbergs sources premium organic Cumin Powder, which is hand packed in small batches in North Yorkshire for a fresh taste.

Organic cumin is an assertive flavour that is very rich – an earthy warm flavour with a slight bitterness. It needs to be used carefully because it can dominate. Is a key component of Indian curries and in Middle Eastern dishes like harissa and chermoula.

Axel’s Tasting Notes: Organic Cumin Ground is Assertive and Pungent: earthy, warming, and slight bitter. If dry roasted, it develops a mild nutty taste.

Food Pairing: Indian curries, Mexican dishes, add a pinch to mince or a homemade burger, which lifts the taste.

More about Cumin

Cumin plants, Cuminum cyminum, are small, delicate looking annuals. Their slender branched stems that grow to 60 cm high, which don’t seem quite right for a robust earth spice.

Cumin leaves are deep green, frond-like, a bit like fennel leaves. Their flowers are tiny and pink.

Cumin seeds are 4 – 5 mm long and very thin. They are quite straight with a slight curve. Their colour 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 2 mm 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 is pungent, warm, earthy, lingering and sweet, with 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.