Taste the World: Cardamom

Introducing the Taste the World Club, a collaboration between the Scarsdale Public Library and Apiary at the Library.  

Each month we will provide a small amount of a different spice or spice blend from a different part of the world.  

Cook with the spice and join us for a Zoom discussion of what we each made.  Participants will share tips, recipes and opinions of how their sampling the spices went. 

For November, we will be cooking with Cardamom.  Cardamom is used to spice both sweet and savory dishes. It is widely employed in Indian, Middle Eastern, Arabic, and Swedish cuisine. It comes in two types and is used as whole pods, seeds, or ground. Cardamom is found in the garam masala spice mixture that seasons meat and vegetable dishes, and in hot beverages such as masala chai and Turkish coffee.

Cardamom is a spice made from the seed pods of various plants in the ginger family. Cardamom pods are spindle-shaped and have a triangular cross-section. The pods contain a number of seeds, but the entire cardamom pod can be used whole or ground. The seeds are small and black, while the pods differ in color and size by species.

Recipes using black cardamom often call for using the whole pod, with the seeds intact. The pods are then discarded after cooking is done as chomping into the whole pod is unpleasant.

If you're using green cardamom in a recipe, ideally you'd start with whole cardamom pods. If you buy ground cardamom from the spice section, it won't be as flavorful since the essential oils of the cardamom seed will lose their flavor relatively quickly after the seeds are ground.

Cardamom has a strong, sweet, pungent flavor and aroma, with hints of lemon and mint. Black cardamom has a smoky note and a cooling menthol one as well.

Here are some of the many uses of Cardamom:

15 Recipes That Prove Cardamom Makes Everything Taste Better

50 Recipes That Will Make Cardamom Your New Secret Ingredient

25 Ways To Use Cardamom