My flabber was utterly gasted when stirring my spagbog sauce & thinking 'why is this so pink?'....... tomato triturado is more a natural orangey red, carne picada cooks brown so????.......
Cut to me looking on pack. Colorante
I'd inadvertently picked up burger meat, but even then WHY make it an unnatural pink colour? Burgers are brown!
UK supermarkets & butchers have been known to have pink lighting, but I think this tops the lot............BTW it was Eroski...

I was a Saturday lad for Dewhursts in the 60's. We used to put pink coloured spices in both the burger and sausage meat. Despite well hung meat being dark, the buyer much prefers meat a bright colour.

Doesn´t the same go for Paella ?? why is the rice so yellow? Colorante!

Because they add Saffron.

Interesting prog.on the goggle box last night regarding chicken breast fillets.

Apparently its normal practice in the major supermarkets to inject them with water containing a touch of salt and some other water retaining chemical.

This has the effect of making them look much plumper than they really are and also conning the housewife into paying for 25% of water in the total weight.

That is why chicken breast fillets in the major UK supermarkets look nothing like chicken.
They are a insipid grey colour. They should actually be pink.

The same is done to pork - that is why when you cook bacon you get that white foamy stuff and it does not go crispy anymore.
Re paella - we would put saffron in to make it yellow but as this is so expensive commercial paella has colourant in it as does most restaurant paella.

**not going there.....

Bizarre....as I said, it cooks brown whatever colour it starts.

Unfortunately this is very old news to some of us, it's just that folk are finally waking up to the fact.

Salmon too - the paler as far as I know means the opposite, ie it's farmed therefore unnaturally fat.

Oh, and smoked haddock. Why oh why do people prefer that ghastly yellow? Naturally smoked uncoloured looks & tastes so much better

I suppose in paella they could in theory use turmeric but that would add an unwanted flavour...

Yes indeed it would - a bit more like a Biriani!

To get a good yellow colour with saffron takes a lot of saffron and that in itself can overpower the taste. Normally the standard "colorante" is used in addition to some saffron.

It is supposed to be saffron which is delightful but I suspect many places use turmeric or colouring.

The supermarkets have long perfected the art of selling water. I am a shareholder and fully approve of their duping the consumer. I buy my fresh supplies from the market. Still not perfect but better than the supermarket.

The feed for cheap farmed salmon indeed contains colouring to colour the flesh.

Strange old world isn't it?

Certainly is, Stanley..... however I'm pleased to say I checked when in Carrefour this afternoon & carne picada does not contain colorante there.....

When they quote on a package, less than 10% added water, this means less than 10% MORE than the permitted 14%, so it could be nearer 25% added water, no wonder things sizzle when the hit hot fat....

Which country are you quoting? 14% permitted? B Hell I thought I knew a reasonable amount, and always try to buy things with the least added water but I didn't realise that

While we're on the subject does anyone know why some wines go a purple colour when reduced in a sauce?

Freaks me right out.

Fiona, I totally agree with you. Things are changing and if you aren`t on the ball as you were then we are duped. I`ve noticed certain things too. But they are slow, gradual things and they think that we won`t notice.

There are other things too. People don`t know how to shop for meat anymore. Meat that is pre-packed on the shelves are labelled - but what it says on the packet isn`t what it really is. People don`t know how to shop anymore because they have never been in a butchers shop - half the time there isn`t one in their town and if there is they wouldn`t know what to ask for! The supermarkets have taken over.

The supermarkets are 99% to blame but the consumer is 1% (or maybe less for one and more for another) as customers like things a certain colour, shape or size. At work the other day a colleague had a shop-bought meat salad. The ham looked `not as pink as it usually did` - so she binned it. I picked it up and sniffed it. There was nothing wrong with it and it was within its use-by date by 4 days. She wouldn`t have it - it wasn`t the right colour!

I was the girlfriend of the son of a butcher. We lived together, donkeys years ago, in a flat above the shop. As we were young, in love and living on the poverty line, we ate all the cast offs at weekend that would never be for sale and would be thrown in the scrap bin at the back of the shop. Some of the meat we ate was darker than its normal colour and in some cases bordering on green. Cooked well - tasted fabulous. I was never ill and I`m still here.

I married my butcher`s son boyfriend. Been together 20 years and have two strapping sons. I always buy stuff past its sell-by-date and freeze it for use later.

Never, ever with fish though.