Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Annatto along with all the Annatto containing recipes presented on this site, with 26 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 Annatto recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Annatto as a major wild food ingredient.

Annatto seeds are the seeds of the Achiote trees Bixa orellana of the tropical Americas. 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) which can be extracted 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 tast to food, but they do provide an amazing deep scarlet colour to foods. You can use these foods in any recipe that calls for red food colouring (such as many Indian Curries).