DYEING COLORS IN VIET NAM’S CULINARY CULTURE (part 1)

Color is always attractive in Viet’s culinary culture. From long time ago, Vietnamese people knew how to use natural ingredients to create the stunning color for their dishes.

Only using the natural ingredients, but with many years experiences and the clever, elegant makes the color in Vietnamese culinary culture be always perfect, and spot-on.

Green

Rice leaf

Green is the color of leaf, usually appears in many Viet Nam’s dishes. The gentle green is usually named under the color of “cốm”, but “cốm” featured green is made of young rice, bringing the flavor of the whole rice plant in a piece of sticky “cốm.”

Pandan leaf

However, the popular ingredient used to dye Viet’s dishes is pandan leaf. Pandan leaf is easy to raise and really popular. It’s not only easy to make the color but also flavorful. Pandan leaf is used to dye some kinds of cake, jelly or some drinks.

Besides, people can also use star gooseberry leaf or “la khuc” (cudweeds) to make some nutritious dishes.

Red

Gac fruit

Talking about the natural red in Vietnamese dishes, many people obviously think about Gac fruit. The core and seed of Gac are soaked into rice wine to make the light red for “Xoi Gac” (Gac sticky rice), which is a sweet sticky rice dish meaning lucky. The red in the layer around Gac’s seeds doesn’t solute in water, but oil, wine; so it has to be soaked into alcohol or wine for using.

Cashew seed

The Southern culinary prefers cashew seeds to made the red orange color for some dishes. Cashew seeds are harvested, crushed in hot water, detached from the dirt. People take the flesh to ferment and get the red on the bottom, dry, compress into small balls to use.

Beetroot

Cu den (Beetroot) is not only used to make a really good soup, but also used to make color to dye cake, candy or jelly. Smashing the beetroot, putting into hot water and then wait until cooling down. Get all the flesh out, we have the dark red liquid.

Black

The specific black of “banh gai” is made of Gai leaf. Gai is a fiber plant but Gai leaf is used to dye jelly and “banh gai” that is jetty like asphalt.


*Taro**