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Here is a photo of a peppercorn. You can see why a ground one might contain both black and grey bits.
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The "browning" or "coloring" of food during cooking and baking1 is a reaction of temperature and/or time. As a rule of thumb, the hotter your pan or oven, the faster the food will brown.
There are two chemical reactions (or rather chains of reactions) that play a significant role in cooking:
The Maillard reaction, which affects proteins (-> browning a ...
26
No, as far as I know pasta made with squid ink, often called nero di seppia, should be stable, and the ink doesn't normally bleed into the water.
From my experience after boiling black pasta, even the fresh kind, the water comes out clear like with regular one, with just a bit of clear starch being left behind.
If you boil regular and black pasta mixed ...
16
Hojicha is a green tea which is made from bancha, a low grade green tea, and cooked slightly; this very inexpensive green tea often comes out brown because it is discolored by oxidation. Other than this variety, and some very stale bancha, I can't think of a Japanese green tea that comes out brown. Some stale kukicha might come out brown, and low quality ...
16
As the USDA says, the protein myoglobin is the main cause of the red color of meat; it achieves this color when exposed to oxygen. Red meat (or dark meat) is myoglobin-rich, from "slow-twitch" endurance muscles, while white meat has little myoglobin, and is from "fast-twitch" muscles. So it really is the protein in the meat, as you guessed! But we can ...
14
Ah, we consumers and our expectations:
Egg yolks are yellow.
But in reality, yolks come in a range from pale yellow to deep orange. The colour is determined by the food (wheat makes lighter yolks than corn, for example) and can be influenced by feeding "colourants" for a darker hue. Some regions allow even artificial dyes, but a pinch of paprika will do ...
13
It's quite likely that the steaks that ended up darker were dry when you started cooking them.
If you don't dry off the surface of your steak, the heat is used to evaporate the moisture on the surface, which ends up steaming the steak rather than developing a good char/crust.
The darker colors are the result of a chemical reaction that results in more ...
12
While many pictures show them deep red (perhaps for the dramatic effect?), even orange flesh wih only some red tinge is normal.
Even the wikipedia link you gave in the question states:
The Moro is a "deep blood orange" meaning that the flesh ranges from orange-veined with ruby coloration, to vermilion, to vivid crimson, to nearly black.
The color of ...
11
It appears that the pH of your bread changed during baking. Beets are red because of their anthocyanins. According to Wikipedia:
Anthocyanins can be used as pH indicators because their color changes with pH; they are pink in acidic solutions (pH < 7), purple in neutral solutions (pH ~ 7), greenish-yellow in alkaline solutions (pH > 7), and colourless in ...
10
Squid ink is used to make black pasta, no reason it wouldn't work with butter. Good fishmongers should be able to source it for you.
9
As The Color of Meat and Poultry article from the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service explains:
Myoglobin, a protein, is responsible for the majority of the red
color. When it is mixed with oxygen, it becomes oxymyoglobin and
produces a bright red color. The remaining color comes from the
hemoglobin which occurs mainly in the circulating blood, ...
9
The story is more complicated than SAJ tells it. Blueberries, like many other purple foods, are colored by a pigment called anthocyanin. It changes its color from red at very low pH to real blue at very high pH. At the blueberry's natural pH, the color is a purple with more red than blue in it.
What you can do is to juice some blueberries separately, then ...
9
Anthocyanins are antioxidants that are a very common water based pigment in plants. There are over 500 varieties that have been isolated from plants which are are responsible for many blue, red, and purple pigments in flowers and fruit. It is thought that the colors serve to attract pollinators to flowers and camouflage leaves from herbivores.
They are the ...
9
The real question should be "what makes sausages pink" - but more later.
All meat turns greyish-white or brown when cooked. This is due to the myoglobin, which makes raw meat look pink or red, being not heat stable. When cooked it denaturates to metmyoglobin, which is grey-brown.
For pinkish sausages, curing salts are used. They contain sodium nitrite, ...
8
The color of the yolk is based on the chicken's diet. I eat vegetarian fed eggs from the grocery store and they have deep yellow yolks. If I go back to buying standard white eggs its a bit disconcerting because they have very pale yolks.
In the fall is when the eggs are the orangest for pasture raised eggs, again something about what is available to feed. ...
8
Regarding the last question:
Do egg producers and/or chefs use dirty tricks to effect a yellow
yolk? Dye? Food additives?
Yes, they do!
In fact scientists have experimented with food additives in order to control the color of the yolk. Interestingly enough the preferred color of the egg yolk differ between countries and even between regions within ...
8
I just happen to cut into this literally Half Bloody Blood orange! Tasted great and so pretty!
7
According to this blog, you can make blue dye from red cabbage, water, and baking soda. I don't know if it would specifically work on scallops, but I haven't been able to find any proof that alkaline dyes are detrimental to them. The article points out that they work for pastries, though.
Spinach or matcha (green tea powder) could work for green dye. ...
7
The answer is anthocyanins, the same that can turn ginger blue and are responsible for purple snap beans and cabbage. The reaction occurs relative to pH and is perfectly safe. Anthocyanins are present in their range of colors in many foods including cabbage, ginger, garlic, and berries. When used as an additive, they have the E number E163.
6
It's the kind of tea you are using. Japanese green teas are mostly steamed, where Chinese teas are roasted, in order to stop the leaves from breaking down. When the leaves are steamed, as in Sencha or Matcha, they produce a very green leaf, and in turn, a green brew. If a restaurant serves you a really green colored tea, its most likely a powdered sencha (...
6
Yep I agree with Stefan I'd get a can of edible spray paint!! (no affiliation)
6
Based on comments, the likely culprit is moisture cooking out of the mushrooms and into your other ingredients. Mushrooms contain a surprising amount of liquid, and when cooking them you'll see that they shrink down significantly due to moisture loss. If you're adding them to other ingredients, some of the resulting liquid is hanging around in the pan long ...
5
Texture. Although I can see perfectly, I use texture to tell me if pasta is done, for example. It's obvious for spaghetti but I do it for macaroni too, or any shapes. Just stirring a pot full of boiling water with raw macaroni, then stirring a pot full of boiling water and cooked macaroni, is a very different experience. Stir frying raw meat, partly cooked ...
5
I have seen the same phenomena with cooked hamburgers and steaks. My research led me back to part of your question having to do with duck meat being characterized as red meat.
What differentiates red meat from white meat is the amount of myoglobin in the meat which absorbs oxygen from the air. All red meat, when exposed to air, will turn bright red. I ...
5
If you just want to change the color - just some black food coloring should be fine.
If you can't find it in a store locally, you can always see if a bakery that does cakes will give you just a tiny bit or if they'll blend a few colors to make a dark gray.
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This is another case for anthocyanins, the same compound that causes garlic and ginger to turn blue. Anthocyanins are pH sensitive, only appearing blue or purple when in the presence of acidity. As you cook the beans, the cells begin to rupture and lose water, which causes the acid around the anthocyanins to be diluted. As this happens, they lose their color ...
5
You are not stating whether you are making the pasta yourself or if you are using premade pasta. I am going to assume it is the former.
For red pasta, I would recommend substituting some of the liquids with beetroot juice. You will need to experiment with it to get the color right.
I would also recommend trying it in pasta both with and without egg, as the ...
5
It's almost impossible to tell without studying all the different types of blue/purple potatoes and memorizing slight differences in size and hue. One trick is that the potatoes with the deepest, darkest blue skin typically have purple flesh. And the lighter ones are more likely to have flesh that's yellow or even white.
Sometimes, the potato will have a ...
5
As Wikipedia states (with good sources):
A Vidalia onion (/vɪˈdeɪliə/ or /vaɪˈdeɪliə/) is a sweet onion of certain varieties, grown in a production area defined by law of the U.S. state of Georgia and by the United States Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).
The varieties include the hybrid yellow granex, varieties of granex parentage, and other ...
5
Note that carrot cake isn't the bright orange of raw or even boiled carrots either. This is especially true of the crust and from your description of partway through cooking I suspect that's the colour you're looking at. If the inside is much better, there's still hope.
Many colourful compounds in plants aren't stable under heat, but even ignoring that, ...
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