Ancient, Pungent Turmeric

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Native to Southeast Asia, turmeric is mentioned in India’s ancient Atharva Veda, suggesting that it was established widely throughout both regions at least 3000 years ago.

YOUR FIRST BITE of fresh turmeric will be as eye-opening as your first bite of fresh ginger. The brilliant orange rhizomes are seductively pungent and charged with a peppery, camphorous flavor. In the flavor you can sense this spice’s exotic origins and imagine its scent perfuming a teeming bazaar or a maharaja’s banquet table.

Unfortunately, peak flavor occurs only in fresh rhizomes. When they dry, the essential oil begins to oxidize and evaporate. As long as the rhizomes remain whole, their flavor, though subdued, retains a warm, woody, almost sweet character. When the dried rhizomes are ground, however, this appealing flavor degenerates, leaving the less volatile, bitter compounds to dominate. Turmeric’s color persists as a phantom reminder of its original spiciness.

Until recently, most Americans were familiar only with the vibrantly colored but feebly flavored ground spice. We knew it as a curry’s bitter undertone or as the dull powder left to languish in the back of the pantry. We saw it but did not taste it when, as one of the food chemist’s favorite colorings, it brightened our butter, mustards, jellies, and cheeses.

Today, many of us can experience fresh turmeric’s headier flavors as an increasing number of markets serving a Southeast Asian clientele stock fresh or equally pungent frozen rhizomes. Gardeners fortunate enough to live in America’s hotter climes can grow it as well (see “Growing Turmeric”, on opposite page).

For a slightly less peppery but still aromatic taste, we can buy the whole dried rhizomes and grind them when we need them. They are available in Oriental markets and natural food stores and from some mail-order suppliers (one source listed on page 47).

Your efforts to acquire fresh, frozen, or whole dried turmeric rhizomes will be rewarded in the fuller flavor dimensions of this ancient and fascinating spice.

Family resemblance

Turmeric, Curcuma longa (formerly C. domestica), belongs to the Zingiberaceae (ginger family). As with ginger, the spicy part of turmeric is its ­rhizome, or underground stem. Its luxuriant leaves are comparatively flavorless, though in Indonesia the young shoots are eaten raw.

Turmeric’s rhizome resembles ginger’s, though it is smaller, rounder, and covered with a darker skin. Turmeric’s central “mother” section is globular and referred to as a “round” in the spice trade. Its protruding “daughters” or “fingers” are pencil-shaped, unlike ginger’s flattened forms. But the telling difference lies in turmeric’s flamboyant yellow-orange flesh, far brighter than the drab tan flesh of ginger.