Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Spice guide to Annatto Seeds along with all the Annatto Seeds containing recipes presented on this site, with 15 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Cornish recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain as a major flavouring.

lipstick tree) Bixa orellana of the tropical Americas — members of the Bixaceae (achiote) family. This is a shrub that bears pink flowers and bright red spiny fruit which contain red seeds. The fruit themselves dry and harden to brown capsules. Though inedible, the fruit is harvested for its seeds, which contain annatto, a red colouring (also known as bixin) in the pulp surrounding them. This can be extracted simply by stirring the seeds in water. It is used to colour food products (such as Red Leicester and Cheddar cheeses) and is the main ingredient in the Mexican spice mix recado rojo or 'achiote paste'. The seeds are also used as a colourful additive to Jamaican and Filipino cuisine. The seeds themselves have only a very gentle floral aroma (due to the presence of the chemical ishwarane) and thus impart no real taste to food, but they do impart an amazing deep scarlet colour to foods. You can use this spice in any recipe that calls for red food colouring (such as many Indian Curries).

The red colouring is due primarily to the presence of bixin ((9′Z-6,6′-diapo­carotene-6,6′-dioate)) in the seed, though other carotenoids and apo­carotenoids (notably norbixin) have also been identified. Brazil remains the chief exporter of annatto, though the Spanish introduced the tree to the Philippines where it is both grown commercially and used in the local foods.

It is said that the original Aztec form of drinking chocolate xocoatl also contained annatto seeds (which would have given the drink a deep red colour, similar to blood). In Central America, today, annatto seeds are more commonly fried in oil to make a red-coloured annatto oil which is then used in cooking.

Though inedible the fruit is harvested for its seeds, which contain annatto a red colouring (also known as bixin) in the pulp surrounding them. This can be extracted simply by stirring the seeds in water. It is used to colour food products (such as Red Leicester and Cheddar cheeses) and is the main ingredient in the Mexican spice mix recado rojo or 'achiote paste'. The seeds are also used as a colourful additive to Jamaican and Filipino cuisine. The seeds themselves have only a very gentle floral aroma and thus impart no real taste to food, but they do provide an amazing deep scarlet colour to foods. You can use this spice in any recipe that calls for red food colouring (such as many Indian Curries).