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Cumin Seeds standard jar; non organic

Description Price Quantity
Cumin Seeds Standard Jar 45g £2.25
Cumin Seeds standard jar; non organic View larger Image

Cumin is an ancient spice that originated along the Nile in dim and distant ancient times.  From there, cumin has travelled the world and is now grown in many hot parts of the world - throughout North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean, India, China and America.  Cumin has an aroma that is strong, earthy and classically spicy, with some bittersweetness coming through.  The flavour of cumin is rich, earthy, slightly bitter with a hint of mint perhaps that comes through.  Cumin is often dry roasted which reduced the mintiness and adds a characteristic nuttiness that is called for in curries.  Cumin is popular in many cuisines in the world, for example Indian curries, Moroccan couscous, pickled cabbage in Germany, fish dishes in the Lebanon and Tex-Mex chiles.


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.  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 and type "cumin" into the search function, or look at Allrecipes or the BBC Recipe Websites.


Steenbergs Cumin Seeds 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.

+ Show Nutritional/Allergy Information

Values per 100g:
Energy 348kCal; 1480kJ
Protein 17.3g
Carbohydrates 68.5g
Fat 0.6g

Values per 2g teaspoon:
Energy 7kCal; 30kJ
Protein 0.3g
Carbohydrates 1.4g
Fat 0.0g

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