Saffron, or the “red gold,” is by far the most expensive spice you can buy. The reason is that it takes a lot of saffron flowers to make a single ounce of saffron. Each saffron flower has only 3 stigmas. The stigmas are the part that is the most fragrant and are bright red. So when buying saffron one should look for very red fragrant strands (on the left). The best saffron in Iran is grown in Khorasan which is in the northeast. Saffron is used sparingly to add taste and color to different foods both sweet and savory. To get the most out of this expensive spice, I grind the strands in a very small coffee grinder (see below in tools) until it is a fine powder (on the right) and sprinkle it directly on the food in most of my recipes.