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Caraway seeds are the chief spice features in savory dishes.
If cooking is your passion, you already incorporate these seeds
The strongly aromatic caraway is a member of parsley or Umbelliferae family, the family that also includes commonly known herbs and spices such as dill, anise, fennel, cumin, etc. Scientific name of caraway is Carum carvi.
Medicinal Uses:
• Caraway indeed has many health benefiting nutrients, minerals, vitamins and anti-oxidants.
• Caraway seeds are rich source of dietary fiber. 100 g seeds provide 38 g of fiber. They increase bulk of the food and help prevent constipation by speeding up movement of food through the gut. In fact, gastro-intestinal transit time of food is greatly decreased.
• Fiber also binds to toxins in the food and helps protect the colon mucus membrane from cancers. In addition, dietary fibers bind to bile salts (produced from cholesterol) and decrease their re-absorption in colon, thus help lower serum LDL cholesterol levels.
• Caraway contains several health benefiting essential oils. Principle volatile compounds are carvone, limonene, carveol, pinen, cumuninic aldehyde, furfurol, and thujone. These active principles in the caraway seeds are known to have antioxidant, digestive, carminative, and anti-flatulent properties.
• Caraway has several health benefiting flavonoid antioxidnats such as lutein, carotene, crypto-xanthin andzea-xanthin. These compounds are indeed functions as powerful anti-oxidants by removing harmful free radicals from the body thus protect from cancers, infection, aging and degenerative neurological diseases.
• Caraway spice is an excellent source of minerals like iron, copper, calcium, potassium, manganese, selenium, zinc and magnesium. Copper is required in the production of red blood cells. Iron is required for red blood cell formation. Zinc is a co-factor in many enzymes that regulate growth and development, sperm generation, digestion and nucleic acid synthesis. Potassium is an important component of cell and body fluids that helps controlling heart rate and blood pressure. Manganese is used by the body as a co-factor for the powerful anti-oxidant enzyme, superoxide dismutase.
• The seeds indeed are the storehouse for many vital vitamins. Vitamin A, vitamin E, vitamin C as well as many B-complex vitamins like thiamin, pyridoxine, riboflavin, and niacin particularly are concentrated in the caraway seeds.
This biennial, herbaceous plant blooms once in every two years to creamy flowers in umbels. It grows to about 2 feet in height and bears small feathery leaves. caraway seeds should be planted in dry, well-drained soil.
Caraway is a versatile culinary herb that is commonly used in breads – particularly rye bread, and also occasionally to flavor cheeses such as havarti.
Caraway is also used to spice certain sweet-tasting liqueurs.
Caraway can also be cooked as a root vegetable much like parsnip or carrot.
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