Natural Food Colours Guide

Color your life with natural food colors…

You eat with your eyes first !

As a vegan cook and baker I love to use and play with natural and organic colors in the composition of my recipes !
Especially in a Veg Cuisine the visual aspect and composition of a dish influences us in the way how we enjoy a fresh tasting food and makes it even more delicious.
In this post we learn how to produce our own organic food colors without any chemicals (of course) !
Enjoy and please send me your suggestions and recipes !

Nowadays you can find in every Biostore raw fruits and vegetables powders that you can easily use to color your food by just adding a pinch or tablespoon to your recipe.
Brands like Biotona, Lebe Pur, Iswari are proposing vegan powders such as Red Banana, Urucum, Hibiscus Flowers, Rose hip, Macha tea, Beetrooth, Mint, Spirulina, Chlorella, Supergreens, Spinach, Aronia Berry, Acai and much more.

So first hereafter some Basics to consider when you start to dye your food:

1. Just know that some of the following colors have still their own flavor and in consequence strongly colored foods also tend to be strongly flavored food. So keep your final flavor in mind so that the colorants don’t overwhelm it and take this in consideration when you compose your recipe.
2. Also remember that working with natural coloring in general you can expect a paler, more pastel-type of result. So if you want them more intense you need to make concentrated natural food dyes or use powder rather than juice.You can also help keep the dyes at their vibrant-y best by cooking the vegetables ahead and blending them into a purée rather than using the raw juice.
3. Vegetables-based dyes can turn brown when baked, when otherwise put in an alkaline environment, or when sufficiently oxidized. Thus, vegetable dyes WILL NOT WORK when baked unless the batter or dough includes sufficient acid medium such as lemon juice, or vinegar. I highly recommend stirring lemon juice into your vegetable juice in at least a 1:6 ratio.
   

RED FOOD COLOR
1) Strawberries or pomegranate.
-To procure your dye, add a pinch of lemon juice, put the berries in a food processor or blender, then strain out the colored liquid using a mesh sieve or cheesecloth.
2) Raspberry
– Raspberry purée, strained to remove seeds.
3) Urucum powder
– 1 pinch is enough.

PINK FOOD COLOR
1) Hibiscus flowers
– Let some dried hibiscus flowers boil for 15 minutes in a little water.
– Use the reduced colored water.
2) Beet root
– Replace in your recipe part of the amount of water or milk with filtered pure beetroot juice.
– Use fresh beetroot juice: Take three large red raw beets, remove the green and root end and slice into bite-sized chunks. Place in a small saucepan and cover beets with water. Bring them to a boil over medium heat, reduce heat and simmer until beets are tender and there is only a couple of tablespoons of colored water remaining.
3) Use beetroot powder.
4) Cranberry
– Replace in your recipe part of the amount of water or milk with filtered pure cranberry juice.

ORANGE FOOD COLOR
1) Carrot
– Use the fresh and filtered pure juice of carrots with a pinch of lemon juice.
2) Carrot powder
3) Paprika
– Use a pinch of paprika powder.

YELLOW – ORANGE FOOD COLOR
1) Turmeric or saffron
– A teaspoon of ground turmeric or pinch of saffron to color curries, cakes or bread.
Better be careful, start with very small amounts, and taste as you add.
2) Fresh turmeric juice

GREEN FOOD COLOR
1) Spinach, Green vegetables or spice herbs
– Reduce the greens very finely with a little water.
– Press it through an etamine (linen cloth for filtering) or through a funnel-shaped screen and catch the juice.
– Heat the juice to make the chlorophyll coagulate. A green gel will form on the surface.
– Take the gel with a scoop.
– Add a teaspoon of chlorophyll to color starchy foods or cakes.
2) Spinach powder
3) Mint, parsley or wheatgrass
– Crush some leaves.
– Cook them in water.
– Gain the juice from it.
4) Mint powder.
5) Matcha tea grounded
– A pinch is enough.
Better be careful, start with very small amounts, and taste as you add.
6) Spirulina powder
– A pinch is enough.
Better be careful, start with very small amounts, and taste as you add.

BLUE FOOD COLOR
1) 1/ 2 head Red cabbage
– Cut some thin slices of red cabbage.
– Simmer the cabbage 10 min until the water is very dark and concentrated. This will give you a pretty purple dye.
– In the end, gradually stir in baking soda – ½ teaspoon at a time, until you get a pretty blue hue.
Be careful, because the baking soda will add flavor to the coloring.
Since it is the alkaline quality of the baking soda that causes the red cabbage juice to turn blue, you can also add spinach juice, green tea, or another alkaline ingredients.
Notes: The color in the cabbage juice, itself is not particularly sensitive to temperature, but the mixture of the baking soda with the juice is. So you will want to add the color afterthe food item has cooled, or else only add it to food items that will not be heated.

PURPLE FOOD COLOR
Blues and purples are notorious for being the most difficult dyes to produce, so it can be tricky to get the right hue. Blue butterfly pea flowers are by far the most reliable way to get a beautiful blue or violet. Purple sweet potatoes lend a lovely deeper purple.
1) Blue butterfly pea flowers
– Let some dried blue butterfly flowers boil for 15 minutes in a little water with a pinch of lemon juice.
– Use the reduced colored water.
1) Turnip
– Press turnip and use only a few drops to stain odorlessly.
2) Blueberries
-To procure your dye, pulverize the blueberries in a food processor or blender, then strain out the colored liquid using a mesh sieve or cheesecloth.
3) Purple sweet potatoes
4) purple carrots
6) Purple grape juice
– Boil grapes for 30 min until tender
– Remove from heat; strain through cheesecloth.
– Let juice stand 24 hours in refrigerator then strain again.

BROWN FOOD COLOR

1) Expresso
2) Cacao powder
3) Cinnamon
– A pinch is enough.
Better be careful, start with very small amounts, and taste as you add.
4) Black tea

BLACK FOOD COLOR

1) Black cacao powder
2) Activated charcoal powder
– A pinch is enough.
Better be careful, start with very small amounts, and taste as you add.