How to Be Colorful in Your Cooking

One way to do this would be to put food coloring in everything you make. Imagine red milk, purple soup, or green hamburger! In this article, you will learn easy ways to present color without having to resort to turning your kitchen into an Easter egg convention.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Realize and become aware, that while the most important aspects of food are that it be nutritional and taste good, its visual presentation adds or subtracts from the experience.
2. Let your imagination wander. Now that you are conscious of the fact that foods are visual art too, you are free to combine color and texture with various flavors you're offering at a meal.
3. California alone is a cornucopia! Use color to help you decide upon sides. While most of us have at least some small sense of what foods "go with" what (sweetness complementing pork for instance), this can still leave us with a lot of open-ended questions at the grocery store or in the garden. Food in America is still the proverbial embarrassment of riches reflected in the phrase "fruited plains" in the song "America The Beautiful". So much food, so little time to pick it out!
4. Goethe's Color Wheel (looks so natural - gotta love Goethe!) Go wild with fruits and vegetables. Fresh fruits and veggies are the color wheel of culinary art. Isn't that why it's called Fruit Stripe gum and not Meat Stripe Gum or Bread Stripe gum? To be fair, it's certainly more than possible to use meats, breads, and dairy (especially cheese) for color, but fruits and vegetables are the most obvious choices, and their colors might just give you that edge in getting junk food junkie kids or spouses to go a little bit healthy. Remember too that fruits and vegetables are the sources of many natural dyes.
5. That's what I call berry colorful! Match-up colors with fruits and vegetables. List some colors and then think of corresponding fruits and vegetables. I'll get you started. Reds--beets, cranberries, cherries, strawberries, radishes, pomegranates, tomatoes, grapes, pink grapefruit. Purples--purple cabbage, eggplant, grapes, plums. Greens--grapes (again!), spinach, asparagus, broccoli, kiwi fruit, cucumbers, limes, peppers, parsley, peas, zucchini. Blues--blueberries. Orange/yellow--squash, oranges, cantaloupe, carrots, lemons, corn, sweet potatoes, pineapple.
6. Include colorful beverages. Beverages served in glassware are easy ways to add color. Juices and wines top this list, but you can also take ordinary water and spruce it up with fruit wedges such as lemon, lime, or even orange or grapefruit.

Tips & Warnings

• Please see "Resources" at the bottom of this page for more information on fruits and veggies by color, and also on how various nutritional qualities can relate to various colors.
• Garnishes can add instant color.
• Fruit Stripe gum does not count as a serving of fruit, even if Ronald Reagan said that ketchup counts as a vegetable.