Natural Food Coloring:

Improve Your Family's Health
With Natural Ingredients

By using natural food coloring you can reduce artificial food colorings and flavorings in your family's diet. For some quick inventive ideas from easy to obtain supplies, you can add color to your own creations with the use of many of the ingredients you probably have in your house right now. Each of these, when prepared as directed will give you varying shades of natural food coloring.

At-Home Recipes For Different Colors

• Pink -Chop up red beets and cook in a small amount of water. Concentrate the color by microwaving it into a syrup(on low power though so it does not burn). Freeze the extra syrup till the next use. An alternate for this color is to microwave, till melted, a jar of "all fruit" jelly until liquid.

• Pink can also be obtained from many of the natural fruits, mashed - strain and then add water. The juice of these can be used also. Try cranberries (juice), grapes or red grape juice.

• Red - use a lot of the concentrated beet syrup. The color will be deeper if you allow the syrup to sit in the freezer at least two days before use. Elderberries or black/purple carrots will also give you some beautiful shades of red.

• Pomegranate juice is another soak method. Place the item(s) you are trying to dye in the juice and allow to soak until the shade you desire is reached.

• For red you can also boil your eggs with red onion skins in the same water when you cook eggs.

• Yellow - Add turmeric (this can be found in the spice section at the grocery store) plus a small amount of lemon extract to a small amount of water. Refrigerate this overnight for the colors to intensify.

• Another way is to boil your eggs with lemon peels, or ground cumin or turmeric. Plus, using a concentraed water bath of paprika will give you some beautiful shades of darker yellow.

• Green - blanch chopped spinach till it is a bright green color. Puree in the blender till liquid- store in the freezer. This coloring will have some tiny green specks.

• or just boil the eggs in water with spinach leaves for a beautiful green hue.

• Purple - boil chopped red cabbage in water. Concentrate by following the same directions as beets. Freeze the syrup.

• Blue - a steel-gray blue can be obtained by adding baking soda to the cabbage juice after cooking.

• drain canned blueberries and blend the juice with water

• Brown- Add cocoa powder to frostings for color.

• for eggs, immerse in strong cooled coffee, either brewed or instant

Natural Easter Egg Dyes

All commercially-based easter egg dyes do use terminology on the cartons to make you believe they are safe (Pure food colors, Certified food colors, etc.) but they are still using synthetic colors. For some natural food coloring, with no artificial colors, try the following:

Supplies Needed:

• glass or porcelain saucepot ( do not use stainless steel)

• hard-boiled eggs which were cooked in vinegar water( the vinegar makes the shell softer so it can absorb more color)

• Paper towels, old tea towel etc. (for draining wet eggs)

• empty egg carton(s) for storage

Allow the eggs to sit in the color bath for up to five minutes for best color retention.

• Red: Boil two medium beets until soft. Peel and chop into 1/2" cubes. Cover with one cup boiling water and one tsp. vinegar. Steep five minutes and then strain.

• Orange:save dry onion skins and place in a saucepot and cover with one and a half cups of water. Boil five minutes. Remove from heat and steep until water is a deep orange-brown color. Add one tsp. vinegar and stir. Strain.

• Yellow: mix one heaping teaspoon of tumeric, 2/3 cup of boilng water and 1/2 tsp. vinegar. Steep for five minutes or until color is deep enough to your tastes.

• Yellow #2- Purchase a container of saffron, pour one cup of boiling water over one tsp. dry shreds of saffron. Steep for ten minutes, strain.

• Blue: Add one tsp. vinegar to one cup blueberry or grape juice. Yields one cup of blueish-lavender color.

• Purple: Mix your red and blue dyes (above) together for purple.

• Brown: Use two tea bags to one cup boiling water. Steep for ten minutes. Remove tea tags.

With a few hours, the kids and some simple craft or kitchen supplies, add some imagination and you and your kids will come up with new ideas from cupcakes to popsicles to arts and crafts projects. All of this by just making some natural food coloring in your own kitchen.

Return to "Food Additives" from "Natural Food Coloring".