Blue-coloured ghee rice: Viral food video gets mixed reviews. See how it’s made

Today’s edition of viral foods features a blue-coloured rice that has ignited a range of reactions among social media users.
Pratima Pradhan aka thecookingamma recently shared a video of her making “Butterfly Pea Ghee Rice”. The ingredient that gives blue colour to the rice is the butterfly pea flower, known in Hindi as Aparajita.
While many users were captivated by the unusual colour for a food item, many others said they would not want to eat it.
Sharing the recipe, the content creator said she used 20 pieces of the edible butterfly pea flower for the dish. She boiled the flowers in water, put white rice into it and let it cook and absorb the blue colour of the water. She then proceeded to sauté the rice in ghee, chopped onion, cashew, raisins and bay leaves.

A post shared by Pratima Pradhan (@thecookingamma)
Since the video was posted earlier this week, it has collected over 15 million views and over 2.95 lakh ‘likes’. Over 1,900 users dropped their reactions in the comments section.
Pradhan said she grows the blue flowers at home when a user commented that the butterfly pea flowers available commercially are high in copper sulphate.
“Avatar biryani,” another user, Atharv, said, referring to the epic science-fiction film in which the characters are blue in colour.
“I lost my appetite looking at that bright blue colour,” a user said.
A woman from Malaysian said a Malaysian rice-based dish called Nasi Kerabu too uses butterfly pea flowers.
Butterfly pea flower, rich in an antioxidant called anthocyanin, has immense health benefits. The flowers can be boiled in water and consumed as a tea that is blue in colour. With its distinct blue colour, butterfly pea flower-based dishes have been a huge food trend in recent years, with the flower being commercially available in forms such as powders and tea-dips.