The food world doesn’t want you to make the substitution. The food world wants you to get in your car and go to the store and buy cardamom seeds or whole pods, which you then crush lovingly with your fancy marble mortar and pestle. The food world wants you to know that cardamom is one of the spices that loses its essential oils (hence flavor) as soon as it is crushed.

But because we’re not official spokespeople of the food world, we’ll tell you off the record that the 17 to 20 seeds found in an average cardamom pod translate to 1 teaspoon of ground cardamom, so you’re looking for between one-third and one-half teaspoon.