They grow it in Eastern Washington: https://cyrussaffron.com/about-us-1. And it is significantly cheaper than the imported stuff.

Thanks for sharing this!

I’m half Iranian and didn’t grow up with my dad, so I have very little cultural connection except for my love of Persian food.

It’s hard for me to justify buying the little bottles of Saffron at groceries stores given the price and the ratio of product to packaging.

Now I’m going to order from that company and step up my culinary game! Still not cheap but at least it feels like a good deal and I appreciate that it’s not shipped across the world and that it’s available in bulk.

> https://sadafpack.com/blog/how-can-we-distinguish-original-s...

The contents on the website are a bit.. weird? Good 'ol GPT maybe?

> 3. Distinguishing fake saffron with gasoline Saffron does not dissolve in gasoline. Therefore, by dissolving saffron in gasoline, you can decide if your saffron is original or fake.

This doesn't make sense.

> #first stage;

Put saffron in water. In some cases it will change the color of the water very quickly; but this color change is not worth it, because this fast color change signifies fake saffron.

#second stage;

Put the root in water for a short time. When you remove the root from the water, the original saffron does not lose its color, while if it is fake, it loses its added color completely and does not look the same.

Either someone is poor at communicating in English and using heading styles, or this is some kind of poor quality hallucination.

A personal method I think is effective (especially you are familiar with saffron's smell/taste), is to soak a little of it (as mentioned) for a few hours, and taste it. It should have a slightly sweetish, herbal taste.

you want to buy your saffron from people who don't speak english, trust me

Sure, but I wouldn’t expect such a person to know to use a # for headings either.

1. # might be generated by some blogging software; 2. you might be some kind of racist

Good comment, but you don’t need to say #2

I think it's reasonable to invite people to reinvestigate their preconceived notions of what folks who don't speak english do and do not know. The original comment was essentially "well how would they know to use a # for a heading? I don't expect that from a non-english speaker", which is definitely a statement that should result in some introspection.

I think it’s quite unwarranted and very judgemental. I’m myself a non native English speaker and come from a country where the majority aren’t a native speaker.

To clarify, the stereotypical person who'd be likely to be selling saffron is likely a trader/merchant who's been at it for decades. Such people are excellent at business but often struggle with technology (no offense meant, you don't need to be good at tech to be a good/nice person). I wouldn't except this kind of person to know what a # does for headings.

(It's possible they asked some younger kid/nephew for help - again speaking from experience as I've seen this trend a lot as an Asian myself - and younger gens would likely know how to use a hashtag/pound, but younger gens are generally quite decent with English too. Again, this is in general - of course there are exceptions which this article appears to be.)

1 makes sense, but 2 is very unnecessary. I’m not a native speaker myself, and my main suspicion did not even involve humans writing this.

First archived version on the wayback machine is from November, 2020: https://web.archive.org/web/20201127234815/https://sadafpack...

Thank you!

When have you seen ChatGPT write English like that?

I think earlier versions (GPT2? 3?) were a bit wonky in the sense that they'd make sentences which appeared grammatically correct but not actually make sense. But I didn't play around with them too much. Anyway, the article was nearly the same in 2020 so it's unlikely to be that.

I'm a bit surprised why being cautious and pointing out suspicious parts warrants downvotes. I'm happy to chat with anyone who thinks so to understand their perspective.

A local restaurant where I live has a dish (chili pepper squid) where they add a generous amount of saffron to it, and I always wondered how they can keep the cost so low.

Now when I looked at the pictures on the website you linked, it definitely looks like the fake stuff.

I know the taste of saffron and have never not gotten real saffron at an Indian grocery store, atleast in the eastern United States.