What can be used to color and flavor pasta?

Answer 1

I know of spinach, beet and carrot...but these are usually used just for color.

There are different kinds of pasta flavours, which can come from the basic ingredients in the pasta dough - plain, wholemeal or buckwheat flours, for example, or from ingredients added specifically to achieve colouring or flavouring.

Tomato is a popular colouring for pasta, as is red bell pepper (capsicum); both give a red colour and a pleasant flavour to pasta. Tricolore pasta is commercially sold fresh, dried or semi-dried, and has equal parts plain, spinach and tomato pasta, usually long-style. The green, white and red colours represent the Italian national flag, Il Tricolore.

The three colours of pasta can be cooked together with little significant effect upon the other colours, or they can be cooked separately in order to give a different appearance to the finished dish.

In some parts of the world, especially Spain, Greece and Italy, pasta is also flavoured with squid or cuttlefish ink to achieve a very rich black finish. Octopus ink can't be used for colouring foods because it imparts a grey colour instead of black.

As a rule of thumb, pasta dough is colored at a ratio of one half-eggshell of

puréed vegetable (spinach, tomato paste, and so on) per 200g flour, though you'd vary this according to taste and texture, of course.

Generally speaking, additions to pasta dough are more for colouring than flavouring: it's what you do with the pasta after it's cooked that makes all the difference, whether you just toss it with olive oil or butter and maybe some fresh, chopped green herbs, or add freshly-grated good cheese, or sliced chillies, anchovies, olives, and so on, or whether you serve it tossed with a luxurious sauce of Italian tomatoes, oil, garlic and red wine, or a thick, rich meat sauce: pasta is delicious alone, or with the very simplest or the most complex of sauces.

Having said that, I have a personal, special fondness for tomato-flavoured fettucini or other ribbon-style pasta made with eggs, tossed piping-hot with good European unsalted butter and fine shreds of sharp, hard cheese...

Answer 2

there's a bunch of colors... as in, there's a reddish colored spin wheel flavored like beets. and green for other veggies. stir it up with Alfredo and your set for a tasty and healthy dinner with the family!

Answer 3

Vegetable and fruit juices are used to color pasta. Beet juice will give you a brilliant violet color. Blueberry will give you a deeper violet. Spinach makes pasta green. Squash will color it yellow or orange.

Answer 4

I'm guessing the flavoring is put into the dough/flour used to make the pasta itself.

Answer 5

Pasta can be colored and flavoured using either artificial or natural food colors, if you want the color green it can be derived from spinach, this will add flavour and color to your pasta.

Answer 6

food coloring works just dont use too much

Answer 7

you can make pasta of almost everything!