If there is no red food coloring on hand, you can replace it with the help of handy food products of the appropriate shade. Red is the color of summer berries, but can also be obtained from some vegetables.
Berries
When coloring cake cream or mastic, the hostess cannot do without shades of red. For homemade dye, you can use raspberry, strawberry, cranberry, dogwood, cherry or red currant jams and jams. If you have fresh berries at hand, then you can use their juice or decoction.
In order to prepare a decoction of fresh berries, it is necessary to pour the peeled berries with water at a rate of 1: 1 and bring them to a boil. To add brightness and juiciness to the dye, add lemon juice or acetic acid to the water. Also, housewives use berry syrup boiled down to a thickness. From red berries, you can get a dye of various shades of red, pink, raspberry, and with the addition of blueberries, the dye will acquire a bluish-burgundy color. Berry wines also give a persistent color.
Beet
A rich red color can be obtained with a decoction of beets. To do this, you need to grate one beet on a coarse grater, place it in an enamel pan and fill it with water so that the water slightly covers the beet blank. The broth must be boiled over low heat under a tightly closed lid for 1 hour. Then the liquid should be filtered, squeezing out the pulp well, and a pinch of citric acid should be added to the resulting dye so that it does not change color. The broth must be cooled before use. If you mix beets with carrots and cook according to the above scheme, you can get a scarlet color.
Red cabbage
Culinary experts also use red cabbage as a natural dye. At low temperatures, the coloring substance - rubrobrasyl chloride - is released from the cell sap in the form of crystals. In an acidic environment, it acquires a bright red color, but with a decrease in acidity, it transforms into shades of violet and blue, and in an alkaline environment it becomes green.
To get red dye from red cabbage, you need to finely chop the leaves of one head and pour 6 tbsp. 9% vinegar. The container must stand in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours for the cabbage to release the juice, from which the coloring matter will separate. In red cabbage juice, you can color Easter eggs in shades from pink to blue.
Spice
Spices such as paprika and sumac can be used to color sauces, pastes and other savory dishes. Red paprika powder gives a bright, rich scarlet color to dishes. Sumac is a sour spice obtained from a shrub of the pistachio family. It is widely used in Caucasian and Jewish cuisine. Sumac gives food a ruby hue and replaces lemon and vinegar.
