Name: Wild Hing (Asafoetida)
SKU: BURL30
Price: 9.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Burlap & Barrel Wild Hing (Asafoetida)

Hing also known as asafoetida, is the dried sap of a mountain shrub, and its flavor is incomparable and essential to many South Indian dishes. The aroma is infamously sharp when raw, but after blooming in a little bit of oil at the beginning of the cooking process, it adds a deep, savory, allium flavor — it’s a wonderful alternative to those with a sensitivity to onions and garlic. Those who cook with hing know that a little goes a long way. Start with 1/8 tsp and bloom it in fat at the beginning of the cooking process.

Most hing is blended with rice or wheat flour in order to prevent caking, but Burlap & Barrel wanted to provide a grain- and gluten-free version, so they blended it with their New Harvest Turmeric, which is often used in combination with hing in cooking.

Origin: Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan
Process: Dried, then ground
Ingredients: New Harvest Turmeric (Curcuma longa), 80%; wild hing (Ferula asafoetida), 20%
Tasting notes: Raw Onion • Roasted Garlic • Pear
Pairs well with: Cloud Forest Cardamom, Andante Yellow Mustard, Wild Mountain Cumin

Size: 1.0 oz glass jar

Read more about the long and rich history of hing in this fantastic piece that Vidya Balachander wrote for Whetstone Magazine.

Sourcing: Grown in the foothills south of Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, hing is a native plant that grows wild and is harvested by local foragers. The plant resembles anise, but instead of collecting the seeds, foragers cut the plant at its base with a curved knife and collect the gum-like sap that emerges from the exposed cut. The sap is then placed in containers in a dark room to dry. After drying, the hing forms slightly sticky, resinous pebbles that are ground to a fine consistency.

Burlap & Barrel founded by Ethan Frisch a native New Yorker, entrepreneur and activist around food systems and social justice. Ethan has worked in kitchens as a line cook and pastry chef in New York and London, and as the chef behind Guerrilla Ice Cream and Ori Zohar who is an experienced social entrepreneur and the co-founder of Burlap & Barrel, where he leads the company's domestic operations, eCommerce and finances. Burlap & Barrel is a Public Benefit Corporation building new international food supply chains that are equitable, transparent and traceable. They are working towards ending inequality and exploitation in food systems that disenfranchise skilled farmers by Connecting smallholder farmers to high-value markets, Educating consumers about the impact of product traceability on human rights and Sourcing unique foods with terroir that are grown biodynamically and organically using traditional techniques.