Mongra Saffron

What you are actually buying

A saffron flower gives three stigmas. Each is a filament roughly two to three centimetres long: a deep crimson tip fading into a pale yellow style that anchors it to the flower. Mongra is what you get when that yellow style is cut away and only the crimson portion is kept.

That is the entire distinction. It is not a marketing tier, it is a physical description, and it explains the price. Cutting the style away costs labour and it costs weight — you throw away a third of what you harvested — so Mongra is dearer per gram than Lacha. What you get back is colour and aroma concentration, because almost all of the crocin, picrocrocin and safranal in a saffron flower sit in the red tip. The yellow style contributes weight and very little else.

A thread measured 0.8 to 1.0 cm is normal for Mongra. If a seller advertises Mongra with two-centimetre threads, they are either selling you Lacha under a better name or measuring something other than what they are shipping.

What it is for

Buy Mongra when the saffron is the point rather than an ingredient. Kesar milk, kesar pista kulfi, shrikhand, saffron rice where you want the colour to be unmistakable, and anything going into a gift box. It is also the grade most people want when buying for pregnancy or for skincare preparations, where the quantity used is small and concentration matters more than cost per gram.

For a pot of biryani feeding eight, Mongra is a waste of money. Use Lacha — you will not taste the difference under whole spices and meat, and you will spend a third less.

How to use 1 gram

One gram is roughly 450 to 500 threads, which is far more than most people expect. At three to four threads per cup of milk, a single gram is well over a hundred servings. Stored properly it will keep its aroma for two to three years.

Always bloom before use. Crush the threads lightly between your fingers, soak in two tablespoons of warm — not boiling — milk or water for fifteen minutes, then add the liquid along with the threads. Dropping dry threads straight into a dish wastes most of what you paid for, because crocin needs liquid and time to release.

Sourcing and testing

We buy from growers in Pampore, the karewa plateau south of Srinagar where the great majority of Indian saffron is grown, and grade and pack at our own facility on Saki Vihar Road in Andheri East. Every batch is tested for the three ISO 3632 markers — crocin for colour, picrocrocin for flavour, safranal for aroma — before any of it is sold.

The certificate for the batch currently shipping is published on the lab reports page, with the batch code printed on your jar so you can match the two. If the batch code on your jar does not match a certificate on that page, tell us and we will replace the order.

Storage

Airtight, opaque, cool, dry. Light and moisture are what destroy saffron; heat and air merely accelerate it. Do not refrigerate — condensation each time you open the jar will do more damage than a warm cupboard. Keep it away from the stove, and away from strongly aromatic spices, because saffron will pick up the smell of whatever it sits next to.