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Patrick Maness +
Brooklyn is plenty hip, but if you really want to get down to it, the neighborhood of Williamsburg is now known as the epicenter of all things hip and cool. It’s here, amid all the stylish bars and trendy restaurants that Scot Rossillo, considered one of the world’s premier bagel artists, makes his Rainbow Bagels.
The process of making these bagels is precise, but if you watch the viral video, you see what looks like a combination of art and, well, kids making things out of Play-Doh.
While Rossillo has been making and serving these rainbow creations for some 20 years, a veritable technicolor food craze has been popping up in restaurants and on Instagram feeds for some time now.
Rainbow science
The main ingredient is, of course, food coloring. While this may be simple enough, there's an art to adding the food coloring so you can achieve the desired effects.
With rainbow spaghetti, for example, you need to cook the pasta and color it by adding it to a plastic bag with two tablespoons of water and about 20 drops of food coloring.
With some creativity, though, you can use a variety of ingredients to color foods.
Rainbow grilled cheese
Known primarily as a comfort food from childhood, there has been a push to reinvent the grilled cheese for some time. Well, rather than adding smoked Gouda or Gruyere, Kala Toast Shop in Hong Kong has added color. Their rainbow-colored cheese is flavored and colored by basil (green), tomato (red), and a mix of cheddar and mozzarella (yellow). The blue color, on the other hand, offers definite hints of lavender.
Rainbow sushi
A colorful image that has been popping up on the internet recently shows rainbow sushi. It would be easy enough to just throw some food coloring into the rice cooker for this, but in an effort to maintain the quality of their offering, many places serving rainbow sushi use natural, plant-based dyes.
As you can see, there are various ways to add color to a number of different foods.
Even if you have no plans of adding rainbow food to your menu right now, keep an eye out for the multi-colored bagels, donuts, grilled cheese sandwiches and more. These tie-dyed colors are easy to add to a number of foods and appeal to the kid in each of us.
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