My first bento box and its got blue rice. I’ve always been fascinated with how pretty bentos can be, but put off by the food coloring used to achieve some of those effects. Then I found this excellent tutorial at Eye Candy food blog on how to get a beautiful blue color using red cabbage of all things.
It’s actually pretty easy to do. Well, not as easy as pouring a few drops out of a little bottle from a store shelf, but still very easy and kinda fun too.
Basically, it’s just cooking shredded red cabbage in water. Drain, and you’ll see that the water turned a purple color. By adding an alkaline such as baking soda, it becomes blue! Add an acid like vinegar, it’ll be pink.
To minimize the cabbage flavor of the blue dye, I added a few tablespoons to just the amount of rice I wanted to turn blue. Mixed well and then poured out the excess liquid. Placed the blue rice in the fridge overnight. In the morning, it’s even bluer.
For the tofu fish, it’s just a couple pieces of Crispy Baked Tofu cut into a fish shape with barbecue sauce eyes. The underwater flora is blue lake green beans and the bottom is sliced raw carrots.
That is a really cool bento! Good job! My brothers girlsfriend lives in Japan (born and raised) and I am amazed at the bento boxes they make there, they are so cool! Yours looks great! The blue rice is really clever…
Very cool. I must say I was relieved at the source of the blue rice color!
I had no idea you could do that with red cabbage! That is really cool, thanks for sharing. Your bento is really cute, love the green beans as seaweed!
that’s the best bento box i’ve seen! the fishies = the cutest! i had no idea you could do that with cabbage. sooooooo neato! we stay away from dyes, too – think i’m gonna have to look into some other natural and fun ways to get more colorful in the kitchen now. yay!
WOW, very beautiful :)
Cheers
That is an excellent bento! You’ve inspired me to do one now!
I love this!!
That is just too cute. Love the blue rice idea! And it is such a gorgeous sea-blue too ;-)
Oh my goodness, what a cute vegan bento! The blue rice is waaay too awesome!
looks great! So so cute.
Adorable bento, and wow, that is one amazing natural blue hue! I’m so thrilled to know that this chemical-free coloring really works!
Rad.
Amazing! If my mom had made me meals like that in elementary school I would have been much happier to eat healthful food!
Wow. It looks like something horribly poisonous (no offence at all meant, but I mean some nasty E codes!) and yet it’s red cabbage. Pretty amazing. I know you can turn it blue, but never knew you could make it that blue.
It’s pretty awesome as a whole. And makes me feel like I should start making myself bento boxes.
That is so cool!
That is so cool!Thanks so much for the natural food coloring tip!