Colored noodles, for eating!

Colors rock. This is simply an easy guide for coloring noodles.

Step 1 1. Select your noodles/pasta

I chose rice noodles since they cook quickly (and make a hell of a mess for the cats to play with).

Skip to step 5 if you just want to see how pasta turns out colored.

Comments

[Quixa]

I love this! It's settled. I'm making colorful pasta this weekend for a special dinner for two. Thanks for an easy way to visually spice up a platter! As stated, what a fun idea for holiday colors. I'm going to try orange and black for Halloween and see who else is willing to take a servering. =)

[inhaos]

i can't image eating a BLACK noodles!!
for looking ,good
for eating,no,thanks

really looks nice!

[twocvbloke]

Our local indian takeaway does "tricolour" rice sometimes, it's so funny eating multi-coloured rice in my Byriani!!! :D

[Nymph]

Oh so fun! I've gotta try this for my kids. I'm not sure that their father would approve though.

[RaNDoMLeiGH]

not "approve"..??!! (Repressive much?) give him BLACK noodles then! black noodles with alfredo sauce. Pretty!

[jkoznek]

Black noodles with spaghetti!

[static]

In those situations mom always told dad; quit being such a stick in the mud.

[Nymph]

Ha! My husband is Japanese and noodles are right up there with rice in the "don't mess with it" department. -Well, almost. :)

[bettbee]

Oh my. Approval, is it? Well, luckily for him, he doesn't have to eat them. Having seen many fantastically-colored foods made by all kinds of Japanese folk, I seriously doubt it's a Japanese issue, but more of a power and control problem. If it were me I'd be dying rice the most shocking colors I could find and if the stick doesn't like 'em he can make his own. :-D

[actorintraining6]

doesnt the dye, dye the pot that color too?

[whatsisface]

I heard you can do eggs like this too, I can't remember how off the top of my head.

[Umeko]

you can dye eggs with tea... hard boil them, crack the shells up (dont peel them) and then soak them in tea and you get marbled eggs :D

[red-king]

you can just add food colouring to scrambled eggs before you cook them.

[gwrober]

This is really cool. And that "3 color pasta plate" looks great!

[Der Bradly]

Wow, thats something i would love to see at a restraunt...

[jhvh.one]

very neat...when i was younger i used this method to cook my family some blue spaghetti for an april fool's day prank. it looked very bizarre with the sauce on it

[Box Car Hobo]

This is... genius! You just got me interested in cooking. To the kitchen!

[westfw]

Interesting. I don't think I've ever seen anything other than "normal" food dyes in American Indian/Chinese markets. I wonder if it's a legal requirement (only FDA approved dyes can be sold in the US?) Maybe I just need to look more carefully. (You CAN get "paste" dyes in cake-decorating sections of craft stores. They're MUCH more concentrated than liquid dyes.)

[caturday_projects]

Hm! Try your local asian store, then. They usually have cheap "liquid" dyes (a lot of vietnamese snacks are made of soft rice/coconut dough with different colors) I know that my color powder is indian, but I can find it in almost any "foreign" store here (Norway). I know our FDA-type laws are VERY strict (we didn't have blue food color until a couple of years ago, and blue soft candy was illegal!), but foreign stores still get the powder.. hm! Slipup maybe. I'm thinking the craft/cake-dyes are 1) expensive and 2) maybe not too good for you. ;) The liquid ones would probably work though - it seems the noodles just absorb the water when they inflate, so any color would do. :) (hey, even try a red onion in the water for more "natural color"..)

[taraist]

Or beets! And turmeric! If you don't mind a little added flavor. Can you tell us the ingredients on your Indian dyes? Thanks for the ible!

[caturday_projects]

Let's see...
probably not all natural, hehe. (but the howto still stands, you can use anything!)

Yellow: sodium chloride, E110 sunset yellow FCF, tartrazine E102.
Green: sodium chloride, tartrazine E102, Brilliant blue FCF (no E-number ...)
Red:sodium chloride,tartrazine E102, ponceau 4R E124.

Wiki on E102: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E102
E124: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E124
(is banned in America AND Norway - haha.)
E110: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_Yellow_FCF
Brilliant blue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Blue_FCF

All except brilliant blue can induce allergic reactions.

There seems to be only one major study documenting the effects found.

Go natural if you can, wow.

[westfw]

Heh. Surprise! Thanks for the research!

[milo0is0hot0]

brilliant i find pasta boring to eat and a touch of colour will really help thks!!! i just did not want to use conventional food colouring because it is not good for kids (they go mad!!!!) great instructable!!!

[caturday_projects]

After what I read on wiki I think you should get safe colors, yeah. :) Or don't use too much!

[orangesrhyme]

You don't know how badly translucent noodles weird me out.

[caturday_projects]

Like little jellyfish strings...

[irinazcona]

Awesome!

[BeSublime]

Two words: white balance! Good fun though, just in time for Halloween!

[mikeasaurus]

Fun! And the colour is amazing, I like the way it looks with all the noodles mixed together. Pasta is already a dish that is pretty much endless with the possibilities, and with this you've opened the door to even more! I can't wait to try my next noodles like this.

[caturday_projects]

Thanks, glad you liked it. :) I learned this today too - got the idea reading the howto on colored pasta (for crafting only). I can't wait to use it more either.. White dumplings filled with colored saucy noodles.. mm.

[Saint]

Thanks for the follow up on that one, it got me thinking of other possibilities too.

[GorillazMiko]

That's so cool! It looks good too. I might try out blue & purple. That would be hilarious. And cool. Eggs. +5/5 stars.

[szechuan53]

its hard to replicate the sound of joy i made when i first saw this... kind of like "vvaaaugh!" with a kind of muffled v... 5/5

[iain010100]

Very nice! Now I can make pasta for every holiday associated with a color. If only the rest of us could get along the same as our disparate colored foods.

[caturday_projects]

I'd make macaroni/pasta, red and green for Christmas (if I were a bit more into the holidays, hehe...). The color REALLY stands out in pasta.

[tchiseen]

That's cool,it'll definitely get people's attention.

[ItsTheHobbs]

Yes! this is great!

[The Handmade Project]

Wow, that's some technicolored fun!