Natural Food Color – Sourcing

At Color Kitchen, we primarily use three plant-based colors: beet, turmeric, and spirulina. Each delivers vibrant hues – magenta-pink, golden-yellow, and cyan-blue. For secondary colors (orange, green, red, purple), we blend these primary colors to create a full spectrum. The color extracts are spray-dried onto a carrier to create water-soluble powders without fibrous specs, leaving pure color concentrates.

Beet Powder: Reds and Pinks

Beet color powder from Beta vulgaris, is the same red beet used in cooking. The pigment is called betanin, a compound that gives shades ranging from soft pink to deep magenta depending on concentration and pH.

Betanin is most vibrant in frosting and icing. Color from beet can be used for baking, but will fade at high oven temperatures.

Color Kitchen beet color is sourced from the US.

Turmeric Powder: Golden Yellows

Turmeric's color comes from curcumin, a compound extracted from the Curcuma longa rhizome. You may be familiar with the intense yellow color from curry. Turmeric’s spicy odor is removed when processing into a food color, leaving the concentrate without the flavor.

Turmeric is predominantly grown in India, where Color Kitchen sources this bright yellow color.

Spirulina Powder: Blues and Greens

Spirulina is a blue-green algae, known for being a “superfood”. The color in spirulina comes from chlorophyll, and when processing into a food color, the green/yellow is removed, leaving phycocyanin, a vivid blue. Phycocyanin is heat and acid-sensitive, fading in high temperature baking or shifting color in low-pH, higher-acid recipes.

Color Kitchen sources its Spirulina from India.