Annatto Seeds

I have a funny association with this ingredient. When people ask me to describe the flavor of achiote, I always say it tastes like dirt—the baked adobe blocks that one of the workmen on our ranch would make every summer with dark pebble-filled mud from the arroyo mixed with straw, golden sticks in the black mud. I have always loved that earth flavor! As a child I would break pieces of adobe from the walls of the cowboys’ houses and contentedly suck on them. Something in the earthy, distinctive flavor of achiote brings back that memory, though I hasten to reassure you that it definitely does not taste like mud!