Cardamom

There are two main types of cardamom:

True or green cardamom (or, when bleached, white cardamom) comes from the species Elettaria cardamomum and is distributed from India to Malaysia. What is often referred to as white cardamon is actually Siam cardamom, Amomum krervanh.

Black cardamom, also known as brown, greater, large, longer, or Nepal cardamom, comes from species Amomum subulatum and is native to the eastern Himalayas and mostly cultivated in Eastern Nepal, Sikkim and parts of Darjeeling district in West Bengal of India, and Southern Bhutan.

The two types of cardamom, κάρδαμομον and ἄμωμον, were distinguished in the fourth century BCE by the Greek father of botany, Theophrastus. Theophrastus and informants knew that these varieties were originally and solely from India.

Cardamom has a strong, unique taste, with an intensely aromatic, resinous fragrance. Black cardamom has a distinctly more smokey, though not bitter, aroma, with a coolness some consider similar to mint.

Green cardamom is one of the more expensive spices by weight, but little is needed to impart flavor. It is best stored in the pod as exposed or ground seeds quickly lose their flavor. Grinding the pods and seeds together lowers both the quality and the price (Cook's Illustrated recommends using the whole pod - see below). For recipes requiring whole cardamom pods, a generally accepted equivalent is 10 pods equals  1 1⁄2 teaspoons of ground cardamom.

Recipes:

Cardamom Bread (Nordic)
Garam Masala (Indian spice mix)

Grinding Cardamom
BY COOK'S ILLUSTRATED PUBLISHED MAY 2013

We often recommend grinding whole spices for greater flavor complexity. Does this also apply to spices like cardamom, which is already quite potent when it's available preground?

Cardamom adds a fruity flavor to both savory and sweet recipes that is simultaneously warming and cooling. You can purchase the spice preground or as pods—fibrous husks surrounding tiny dark seeds. To see if grinding the whole spice offered a significant flavor advantage, we compared the taste of the preground spice with that of freshly ground pods in ­cardamom-spiced cookies and cardamom-infused oil. Because we have also heard that some cooks insist on ditching the husk of the pod and grinding just the interior seeds (which make up almost 70 percent of the pod), we made these recipes with just the ground seeds as well.

Tasters agreed that home-ground cardamom (both whole pod and seeds only) boasted much stronger flavor than did preground. They also found that there was very little difference in flavor whether the spice was ground from the seeds alone or with the husks included. Given these results, we’ll grind the pods instead of buying preground cardamom—but take the easy road and leave the husks on.

USE THE WHOLE POD

Grinding whole cardamom pods creates a full-flavored spice.