Lately, many Brazilian restaurants started serving blue dishes. From popular sourdough bread in beautiful blue hues to blue salads and tortillas, it seems like they discovered a secret ingredient that they’re now using to make their food look more beautiful. That’s actually not far from true — they use Jenipapo, a native berry fruit.
Jenipapo berries have been a big part of Brazilian cuisine for centuries. People use them to make syrups, compotes, and liquor, but also in many other dishes. Unripe jenipapo contains genipin, which is a substance that gives an edible blue pigment that can be used to safely color many different foods blue.
Jenipapo has been used as a dye for many years, and past tribes have been using it for body painting and believed it had magical properties. Nobody used it in food until 2014 when biologist Valdely Kinupp published the book Unconventional Food Plants in Brazil where he explained the process of extracting an edible pigment from jenipapo.
Today, blue food is a big trend in Brazil. You can find many examples on social media as people share their unique blue meals with the world.
