Cardamom: Zingiberaceae
Cardamom
Elettaria, Amomum, Aframomum
Zingiberaceae
When I was young, in my early 20s, I used to buy spices that I knew nothing about to explore them. I remember trying mace, annatto, sumac, and of course cardamom. I was not yet much of a cook, but approached them from a botanical perspective. I think I made some very strange-tasting stir-fries during that time.
As I got older, I dove more into actual cuisines, and learned more about ingredients, in their appropriate cultural context, rather than in bins at health food stores or co-ops. I am still learning new things about ingredients every day, as there is an entire planet full of foods that I may never even get a change to try. I read cookbooks, watch loads of YouTube videos in foreign languages, and of course, I try to mimic recipes in my own kitchen. It’s made shopping for ingredients even more fun than it was before.
Cardamom has always been an alluring but confusing ingredient. There are MANY varieties of cardamom and they are all somewhat related (in the same family). I have had most of the ingredients I am about to discuss, though not always in isolation (sometimes found in a spice mix rather than whole). When using most types of cardamom, you will be using them whole, to flavor the overall dish much like a bay leaf (so you discard the pod when done). But you can also toast and grind these pods using a spice blender or coffee blender or food processor. You don’t HAVE to toast them, but with most of these ingredients, a little toasting really brings out the flavor. The resulting powder can go into your dish but be careful, a little goes a long way. Some people only grind the seeds, others will grind both seeds and pods. You just have to play with each ingredient to see what works best for you. In most cuisines, cardamom is used as an aromatic flavoring element, either cooked for a while stew-like preparations, or used to flavor oils before cooking by heating up the oil and adding the spices to the oil until the aroma fills the air and the flavor is infused into the oil.
Just a word to the wise: unless you don’t have another option, avoid the already-powdered forms of cardamom. They are of low quality and a shadow of the real ingredient. Try to buy fresh pods of cardamom. If the recipe calls for powdered, grind the pods yourself as discussed above.
Below is a rundown of the various types of cardamom, and yes, there are more than just black and green cardamom!
Green cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum) has always been my most familiar ingredient. I have used it for many years—when I don’t have enough money to buy good coffee and drinking the cheap, already ground stuff in a can (La Llave, Cafe Bustelo, etc), I make it a little more luxe by grinding up some green cardamom and mixing it up with the ground coffee. It is the cardamom used in chai tea. Green cardamom’s herbal, citrusy, slightly sweet flavor is equally used in sweet and savory dishes. There is something called white cardamom which is usually green cardamom that has been bleached. But sometimes Siam cardamom (Amomum krervanh) is referred to as white cardamom. The bleached green cardamom isn’t recommended. It’s just a muted green cardamom and for an expensive spice, it seems weird to depress its true colors. The practice of bleaching began centuries ago in Scandinavia, when cardamom arrived by sea from Asia sun‑bleached and with an altered flavor that Scandinavians came to like. This sort of bleaching is now accomplished using fumes of burning sulfur.
By the early 21st century, Guatemala became the largest producer of cardamom in the world, with an average annual yield between 25,000 and 29,000 tonnes. This was made possible by coffee producers who often have an interest in green cardamom. India, formerly the largest producer, since 2000 has been the second worldwide, generating around 15,000 tonnes annually.
Siam cardamom (Amomum krervanh) has a similar flavor profile to that of green cardamom, but less camphoraceous and more floral with notes of lemon. The fragrance of Siam cardamom also has hints of mint. It is less pungent than green cardamom, but still similar enough that you can use it as a substitute. Use more of it if you are replacing green cardamom in a dish. In the interest of transparency I had to look this up, as I have not had Siam cardamom before.
Thailand together with some other Southeast Asian countries were annually exporting about 400-1000 tones of siam cardamom seed to the world market. However, there has been a significant reduction of export in recent years. Currently, the crop is facing a serious threat of extinction, due to devastation of its natural habitat by deforestation.
Indian black cardamom
Black cardamom (Amomum subulatum) I came to later in life, as I was not always sure how to use it. It has a distinctly more smoky, though not bitter, aroma, with a coolness some consider similar to mint. It is also used in preparing garam masala, which is commonly used to flavor Indian curries. I started coming across it in recipes for Indian food. Black cardamom is dried over a smoke fire and therefore has a distinct smokey aroma. The seeds have sweetish, smokey flavor when bitten into.
The black cardamom pods are mostly used whole and almost always fried in a little oil to cause it to fully release its flavors and aroma. Before adding to a dish, the pods can also be crushed slightly to reveal the seed. When a recipe calls for black cardamom powder, remove and discard the skin, grind the seeds in a clean, dry coffee grinder, and use immediately. You can also grind the whole pod and strain through a colander to remove the outer skin.
Black cardamom is a native of the slopes of the Himalayas in Sikkim, India, and Nepal and mostly cultivated in Eastern Nepal, Sikkim, and parts of Darjeeling district in West Bengal of India, and southern Bhutan.
The larger Chinese black cardamom is on the left, the smaller Indian black cardamom is on the right.
I have an obsession with Chinese food and have come across tsao-ko or Chinese black cardamom (Lanxangia tsaoko) which is similar to the Indian black cardamom but a larger seed pod. These pods are used for flavoring in the cooking of slow braised meat dishes which are popular in Chinese cuisine. The differences are subtle to the casual observer, but don’t tell that to an Indian or Chinese person—their more developed relationship with these spices can pick up the differences immediately.
Tsao-ko grows at high altitudes in Yunnan, as well as the northern highlands of Vietnam, and in both places it is farmed. It is also dried by smoking which is party why it is similar to Indian black cardamom.
Ethiopian cardamom
Ethiopian cardamom (Aframomum corrorima) has a flavor that is similar to green cardamom. It is extensively used in Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine, and as an ingredient in berbere, mitmita, awaze, and other spice mixtures. It is also used to flavor coffee. I have also not had the personal pleasure of tasting this ingredient isolated but have had it in some of the berbere spice mixes.
The plant is native to Tanzania, western Ethiopia, southwestern Sudan, western Uganda. It is cultivated in both Ethiopia and Eritrea, although the fruits are typically harvested from wild plants—I’m not sure if the wild harvesting is a sustainable practice. Globalism always has a bad effect on wild harvested ingredients. The dried fruits are widely sold in markets and are relatively expensive, while fresh fruits are sold in production areas.
Grains of Paradise (Aframomum melegueta) is another “cardamom” related to Ethiopian cardamom. It imparts a pungent, black-pepper-like flavor with hints of citrus. It is native to West Africa, which is sometimes named the Pepper Coast (or Grain Coast) because of this commodity which has been in active trade for centuries. It is often used as a more luxurious replacement for black pepper.
Grains of paradise are primarily grown in Ghana, in temporary clearings in forest, mixed with other crops. Its current cultivation is a shadow of is former production because of competition from cocoa more recently, and historically because of export restrictions that occurred during World War I.
Green cardamom farm
All these plants are in the ginger family (Zingiberaceae) which includes, of course, ginger, but also turmeric, galangal, and the other pungent root vegetables of which there are many in the family. Ginger and turmeric are the best known of these, and some of you might even be aware of galangal (there are a few different types but greater galangal is the most common). We’ll dive into those ingredients some other time, since they are very important to me. But I think it’s good to know how plants are related to each other and it is interesting that these are related.
Most cardamom species, like this tsao-ko plant, produce their fruits at the base of the plant
Most of these ginger relatives are native to greater Asia, in tropical regions where the temperatures are cool but never below freezing. The ambient moisture is also much higher. The principal pollinators in wild cardamom are solitary bees, something that agriculture doesn’t pay a whole lot of attention to, and are more threatened by human activity than even the domestic honeybees which are having a hard time around the globe. Both the wild and cultivated populations are self-compatible and there are no reproductive barriers between the two populations.
Plants can be grown in Arizona with care or a greenhouse. I, myself, have grown green cardamom, but never got it to produce the pods. I didn’t have the plants long enough to learn if it is possible and I mostly grew the plant out of curiosity. The amount of space it would take to grow enough to use would be quite a sacrifice for such a needy tropical plant. So I am fine buying these spices, and paying a fair price for quality. These spices come from far away and should never be cheap. If they are cheap, it is probably farmers that are being taken advantage of. If not, you are being taken advantage of and the spices may be of poor quality, or old.
You can find many of these various cardamom types at local import markets like Grant-Stone Market and Lee Lee International Supermarket. They will be of varying quality, but suffice. If you want to ensure freshness and quality you may have to go online. Mala Market is a good online source for Chinese ingredients and my go-to for tsao-ko, or Chinese black cardamom. Diaspora is a really one of my favorite companies that is very concerned with [more than] fair trade and has a single source green cardamom. The Spice House has grains of paradise and they also have regular black cardamom. MUST Thai has Siam cardamom. Spice Trekkers has Ethiopian cardamom.