I would like to make my own food coloring with natural vegetables, what is the technique?

I read that you can use Beets to make a natural Red food coloring, how would I go about doing this?

coloring

Best Answer

Anything that's hard to get off of your counter can make a good food coloring. Regarding natural sources, remember that you run the risk of also adding additional flavors so take that into consideration. Among other companies, Annie's makes all natural foods including colorful fruit snacks. What they use for the coloring in these snacks are: turmeric, black carrot juice concentrate, and annatto. (I've cooked with turmeric and annatto before and they DEFINITELY stain.) Aside from Google searches, you could probably find practical natural food dyes by looking in the ingredient list from other all-natural foods.

Back to your specific question about beets, this is from eHow:

1 Put your fresh beets in a glass or enamel pan with just enough water to fully cover them. Bring to a boil and turn the heat down a bit to simmer for 30 minutes. Make sure the water doesn't boil out. Take them off when the beets are not quite done - When a knife goes into them but they're not as soft as you'd like for eating. Remove them from heat.

2 Strain the beets, reserving the beet juice. Peel, slice and chop up your beets. Return them to the beet juice. Soak for four hours.

3 Strain the liquid out and take out 3/4 cup. Add your 2 teaspoons vinegar to this. This is your red dye.

4 Use canned beets and you can skip half of the work. Drain the can reserving 3/4 cup liquid. Add 2 teaspoon of vinegar to this and you're done. You can still eat the beets, too. The fresh ones aren't terribly appealing after this.

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How do you make natural food coloring from vegetables?

1) Choose the source of color.

Pink: strawberries, raspberries.

Red: beets, tomato.

Orange: carrots, paprika, sweet potato.

Yellow: saffron, turmeric.

Green: matcha, spinach.

Blue: red cabbage + baking soda.

Purple: blueberries, purple sweet potato.

Brown: coffee, tea, cocoa.

How do you make natural food coloring at home?

Ingredients US Metric

For pink food coloring.

1/4 cup canned beets, drained.

1 teaspoon drained beet juice from the can.

For yellow food coloring.

1/4 cup water.

1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric.

For purple food coloring.

1/4 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen (if frozen, thaw and drain)

How do you extract color from vegetables?

Mix 1 cup of salt with 16 cups of water and bring to a boil (or \xbd cup of salt with 8 cups of water). Simmer your fabric in this solution for one hour prior to dyeing. (If you are making a plant/veggie based dye, mix 1 part vinegar to 4 parts water and follow the same process).

What can I use for natural food coloring?

Other options for green food coloring include liquid chlorophyll (find it at your nearest health food store), matcha powder, spirulina powder (also sold at health food stores), wheatgrass juice, and parsley juice.

Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Images: Klaus Nielsen, Klaus Nielsen, Klaus Nielsen, Klaus Nielsen