Cooking With Annatto Seeds: Oil, Paste, Powder and the Hard-Seed Problem

Annatto seeds (achiote) are what turn marinades like cochinita pibil’s red and rice yellow-orange. You cook with them mainly for color, and the catch is that the seeds are rock hard: one writer’s seeds bounced around her food processor like pebbles.¹ So nearly every technique comes down to getting the color off the seed and into the food, by infusing the seeds in fat, grinding them into a paste or powder, or buying them already ground or blended. Annatto oil, the easiest of the three, needs only a few minutes on the stove.

For the plant, its pigments and how annatto is regulated, see the annatto seeds profile.

At a glance

What annatto does in a dish

Color. The red pigment comes in an oil-soluble form and a water-soluble one,⁷ so both fat and water can pull color out of the seed. The Caribbean method is to fry the seeds in animal or vegetable fat and cook with the colored fat, and soaking the seeds in water also extracts the dye.

Flavor. The sources don’t quite agree here:

What they do agree on is that the flavor is minor. Annatto is often called “poor man’s saffron,” and The Spice House frames it as a cheap way to get a golden color that doesn’t reproduce saffron’s flavor.⁸ Think of it as color first. If a recipe really needs saffron, see saffron substitutes.

Making annatto oil

This is the most useful annatto technique, and you skip grinding entirely. Two named recipes:

Both work out to 1 part seeds to 4 parts oil by volume. You’ll also see a formula of half a cup of seeds to one cup of oil. That’s twice as seed-heavy as either recipe, and we couldn’t find a named source for it. The Spice House keeps it even simpler: once the oil turns bright yellow, the seeds are done and you can toss them.⁸

The two recipes disagree on storage, a month in the fridge against several months in a cool cupboard, and neither explains its figure. We found no extension guidance for annatto oil specifically. To be safe, go with the shorter, refrigerated figure.

Using it. Use the oil for a traditional sofrito, or in place of the oil in almost any sauté or stir-fry. In the Caribbean the colored fat is used to cook vegetables or meat, and in Vietnam annatto oil brightens the color of coconut-based curries. The oil stains, so protect your clothes and wipe up spills quickly.²

Water or broth instead of oil. Since part of the color is water-soluble, steeping the seeds in hot water or stock also draws it out. Steep a spoonful of seeds in hot liquid, strain once it’s deeply colored, and use the liquid in the dish.

Grinding: the hard-seed problem

Whole annatto seeds are hard, and the sources agree that’s the main obstacle:

• Lisa Bramen, writing for Smithsonian, tried a mortar and pestle and was left with intact seeds and a red-orange stain in the bowl. In a mini food processor the seeds bounced around like pebbles, and after soaking them in hot water for two hours they were moistened but otherwise unchanged. Her advice is to buy pre-ground achiote.¹
• Katzer notes that when annatto is used ground, the seeds are often soaked in hot water first to soften them.⁴ Bramen’s two-hour soak didn’t do that for her, so soaking alone may not be enough.
• Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger’s achiote paste grinds the seeds dry with the other whole spices in a spice mill or coffee grinder to a powder-like consistency.⁵

Bottom line: the named recipe relies on a dedicated electric spice or coffee grinder, and a mortar and pestle is hard going. Both oil recipes strain the whole seeds out, and Bramen’s soak suggests liquid alone does little to soften them. If you have no grinder, use annatto oil or buy achiote powder.

Pastes, blends and dishes

Achiote paste and recado (Yucatán, Mexico). Meat is often marinated in a spice mixture called recado, made with annatto; food prepared this way is called pibil. Mexican cooks also use a ready-made achiote paste of annatto seeds with preservatives such as acetic acid. Milliken and Feniger’s homemade version is built on annatto, by far the biggest of the dry spices, ground with smaller amounts of cumin seed, dried oregano and allspice, then mixed with salt, garlic and enough lime juice to make a paste. It makes about half a cup, keeps in the refrigerator, and is meant for cochinita pibil or any grilled seafood.⁵ Cochinita pibil, the spiced pulled pork of the Yucatán, is also the dish to make with pre-ground achiote.

Sazón (Puerto Rico). America’s Test Kitchen’s homemade sazón uses 1 tablespoon of ground achiote with ground cumin, granulated garlic, salt and optional MSG, and makes about a quarter cup. Sazón is used across the board in Puerto Rican cooking.⁶ See sazón seasoning.

The Philippines. The seeds are often ground and added to soups and stews, and meat is often marinated with annatto-colored seasonings. Filipino-style tamales made with rice use it too.

A claim we couldn’t confirm. You’ll sometimes read that annatto is the essential note in Mexican rice. None of our sources says so, and the named recipes above use it in marinades, pastes, oils and seasoning blends.

What it goes with

Annatto works as part of a blend, not on its own. The named recipes pair it with cumin, garlic, oregano, allspice and lime juice, and Yucatecan recado is a spice mixture built on annatto. Since annatto adds so little flavor, the supporting spices do most of the seasoning. That fits the common advice that annatto shouldn’t be the main seasoning in a blend.

How much to use

• Oil, Ratio (Attributed): about 1 part seeds to 4 parts oil by volume (ATK; Van Aken).²³
• Paste, Ratio (Attributed): 2 tablespoons of seeds for about half a cup of paste (Milliken and Feniger).⁵
• Seasoning blend, Ratio (Attributed): 1 tablespoon of ground achiote in about a quarter cup of sazón (ATK).⁶

Ratio (Method): For coloring a pot of rice or a stew with oil you’ve already made, start with a tablespoon or two in place of the plain oil and add more until the color looks right. You’ll also hear that too much annatto makes food bitter; none of our sources says so.

Storage

No regulator or standards body gives a shelf life for annatto seeds, and none of our sources backs the claim that they keep their flavor for years. Keep seeds sealed, cool and dark, and go by color: bright brick-red seeds are good, and dull brown ones are past their best. See annatto seeds for more. For the oil, see the storage figures in the table above.

Safety

Annatto stains. ATK warns about clothing and spills and stores its oil in glass, and Bramen’s grinding attempts left her mortar and food processor stained.¹ Allergic reactions to annatto are documented. A 1991 case report described hives, swelling and severely low blood pressure within 20 minutes of eating a cereal colored with annatto.⁹ That’s a single case report, so it doesn’t tell you how common the allergy is.

Related

• Annatto seeds, the full profile
• Achiote powder
• Annatto seed substitutes
• Sazón seasoning
• Cooking with saffron and saffron substitutes

Footnotes

1. Lisa Bramen, “What the Heck Do I Do with Annatto?”, Smithsonian Magazine, 2011. smithsonianmag.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. “How to Make Your Own Achiote Oil in Minutes”, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

3. Norman Van Aken, “Annatto Oil”, Food Network. foodnetwork.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Gernot Katzer, “Annatto (Bixa orellana L.)”, Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages. gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, “Achiote Paste”, Food Network. foodnetwork.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. David Pazmiño, “Homemade Sazón with Achiote, Coriander, and Cilantro”, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. Rivera-Madrid et al., “Carotenoid Derivates in Achiote (Bixa orellana) Seeds”, Frontiers in Plant Science, 2016. frontiersin.org · Peer-reviewed ↩

8. “Annatto Seeds”, The Spice House (product page). thespicehouse.com · Merchant ↩ ↩²

9. “Anaphylaxis to annatto dye: a case report”, Annals of Allergy, 1991. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov · Peer-reviewed ↩

Also drawn on

• Bixa orellana (PROSEA), R. Rajendran, Plant Resources of South-East Asia, via Pl@ntUse. uses.plantnet-project.org