Butterfly Pea Flower substitute

Best substitute

Blue spirulina powder

Use ⅛ to ¼ teaspoon for every cup of liquid

Best for blue smoothies and lattes

Different taste

Be clear about which of its two jobs you need, because they have different answers. If you only want blue, a drop or two of blue food colouring gives a better, more reliable colour than the flower does, and blue spirulina powder at an eighth to a quarter teaspoon per cup is the natural version. If you want the colour-changing trick, the pigment is the recipe, and the only workable natural stand-in is strained red cabbage water, which shifts colour the same way but tastes and smells of cabbage. For flavour there is nothing to replace, because butterfly pea barely tastes of anything: a faint woody, green-tea-ish note and no more.

Other butterfly pea flower substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Red cabbage water
Different taste
Use as the liquid, roughly 1:1 with the brewed tea
The one household ingredient with the same pigment chemistry.
What changes
Simmer chopped red cabbage in water for ten minutes, strain, and you have a purple liquid that turns blue with a pinch of baking soda and pink with lemon.
Best for
colour-changing science demonstrations, strongly flavoured cocktails, blue or purple rice, any use where cabbage flavour will be masked
The colour behaviour is genuinely close, because both rely on anthocyanins, and it is the only way to reproduce the shift without a bought product. The problem is honest and unavoidable: it smells and tastes of cabbage. In a spirit-forward cocktail or a savoury rice dish you can get away with it. In a delicate iced tea or lemonade you cannot. Reduce the liquid hard to concentrate the colour and you concentrate the cabbage smell along with it.
3Blue food colouring
Close match
Use 1 to 2 drops for every cup, or a pinhead of gel paste
The reliable, cheap, flavourless answer if colour is all you actually want, and in most butterfly pea recipes colour is all it is doing.
What changes
Best for
blue cocktails and mocktails, icing, buttercream and glazes, blue rice, noodles or dumpling wrappers, anything where the colour must survive heat
Better colour than the flower, completely stable in heat and acid, and no flavour whatsoever. Gel paste is stronger than liquid and will not thin an icing. What you lose is the pH shift and the natural-ingredient story, and if the recipe is built around adding lemon to watch the drink turn pink, food colouring simply sits there being blue. A trick worth knowing: a drop of blue plus a smaller drop of red gives you the violet stage on demand.
4Hibiscus
Different taste
Use the same amount as the brewed tea, steeped 5 minutes
Skips the blue and goes straight to the destination, since most butterfly pea drinks end up pink anyway once the citrus is added.
What changes
Best for
iced tea and lemonade, pink and magenta cocktails, syrups and cordials, hot caffeine-free tea
A vivid magenta rather than blue, and unlike butterfly pea it has a real flavour, sharply tart and cranberry-like, which changes the drink rather than just its colour. That can be an improvement, since hibiscus lemonade is genuinely good, but you must account for the acidity: pull back on the lemon or the drink turns puckering. Also worth knowing that hibiscus is itself pH sensitive and goes duller and browner in alkaline conditions.
5Blue curacao
Taste and texture differ
Replace ½ to 1 oz of the drink's other sweet component
For cocktails only.
What changes
A bright blue orange liqueur that colours and sweetens at the same time.
Best for
blue cocktails, layered and gradient drinks, punch
Vivid blue and completely stable, but it brings sugar, alcohol and a distinct bitter orange flavour, none of which butterfly pea contributes. So you have to rebalance the drink: cut the syrup and account for the extra spirit. It gives a slightly green-leaning blue rather than butterfly pea's indigo. No pH shift.
6Nothing, if the colour change is the recipe
Close match
Omit
The honest case.
What changes
In a colour-changing lemonade or gin and tonic, the anthocyanin shift is not a garnish, it is the entire dish.
Best for
colour-changing lemonade, colour-changing cocktails, party drinks built around the effect
Only butterfly pea, and to a lesser and cabbage-flavoured extent red cabbage water, does the blue to violet to fuchsia shift on contact with acid. Blue spirulina, food colouring and blue curacao all stay stubbornly blue. If none of those is acceptable, make the drink without it. Ordinary lemonade is excellent, and dried butterfly pea flowers are cheap, keep for years and are easy to order, so the better answer is often to buy some and make it properly next time.

What is Butterfly Pea Flower?

Butterfly Pea Flower is Butterfly pea flower is the dried blue blossom of Clitoria ternatea, a Southeast Asian vine, and it steeps into a deep indigo caffeine-free infusion used almost entirely for colour, which shifts to violet and then pink the moment anything acidic goes in.

Cooking tips

Use five to ten dried flowers, roughly a level teaspoon, per cup of hot water and steep about five minutes. Longer does not deepen the blue, it dulls it toward a murky grey-green and pulls out a faint tannic bitterness. Cold brewing in the fridge for a few hours gives the cleanest, most saturated blue of all.
The colour is a pH indicator, so plan the pour. Blue at neutral, violet as acid arrives, and hot pink in a strongly acidic drink. For the layered effect, put the blue tea in the glass, add ice, and pour lemon juice or tonic slowly over the back of a spoon so the colours sit in bands before anyone stirs. Adding a pinch of baking soda pushes it the other way, into a deeper, slightly green-leaning blue.
It only looks blue in clear liquid. Stir it into cow's milk or a pale plant milk and you get a dull grey-lavender rather than a blue latte, because the pigment is translucent and the milk is opaque. Coconut milk gives a slightly better result, and if you want a genuinely blue latte, blue spirulina is the ingredient that does that.
Freeze the brewed tea into ice cubes. Dropped into lemonade they colour the glass gradually as they melt, and if the lemonade is acidic the melting cubes leave violet trails, which is the best version of the trick.
In Southeast Asian cooking it is a dye for food, not a flavouring: blue rice for Malaysian nasi kerabu, layered kanom chan in Thailand, blue glutinous rice dumplings. Steep the flowers in the water first, strain, then cook the rice in the coloured water. Do not confuse it with pandan, which is a green leaf used for flavour.
As with any dried botanical, do not add butterfly pea to a tested canning, pickling or fermenting recipe on the assumption that it is inert. Changing what goes into a preserving jar changes the recipe, so follow National Center for Home Food Preservation guidance for anything you intend to store on a shelf.

Frequently asked questions

What does butterfly pea flower taste like?

Almost nothing, which is the key to substituting it. There is a very faint woody, earthy, slightly green note, a bit like an extremely weak green tea, and no sweetness, tartness or aroma to speak of. Nearly every recipe that uses it pairs it with lemon, honey, lemongrass or gin, and those are what you actually taste. This is why food colouring is a more honest substitute here than it would be for almost any other ingredient.

Can I use food colouring instead of butterfly pea flower?

For colour, yes, and it will be brighter and more stable. One to two drops per cup of liquid, or a pinhead of gel paste. What you cannot reproduce is the colour change, since food colouring does not respond to acid. If the recipe is a colour-changing drink, that is the whole point and food colouring will leave you with a plain blue one.

Is blue matcha the same as butterfly pea flower?

Blue matcha is a marketing name, not a kind of matcha. Products sold under it are usually powdered butterfly pea flower or blue spirulina, and they contain no tea, no matcha and no caffeine. Powdered butterfly pea is genuinely useful, because it disperses without steeping and colours thicker mixtures, so use about a quarter teaspoon in place of a cup of brewed tea. Real matcha is green powdered tea leaf and is a completely different ingredient.

Why did my blue tea turn purple or pink?

Because something acidic went in. The pigment behaves as a pH indicator: neutral gives blue, mildly acidic gives violet, strongly acidic gives fuchsia. Lemon and lime juice are the usual culprits, but tonic water, sparkling wine, vinegar, cream of tartar and even some tap water will shift it. This is a feature rather than a fault. If you want to keep it blue, leave the acid out or add a pinch of baking soda.

Can I just leave butterfly pea flower out?

Yes, in the sense that it contributes no flavour, no body, no sweetness and no acidity, so the recipe will taste identical without it. What you lose is the appearance, and since almost the only reason anyone uses butterfly pea is the appearance, leaving it out generally means abandoning the point of the recipe. Blue lemonade without it is just lemonade, which is a fine thing to drink but not what you set out to make.

Related substitutes

More beverages substitutes

Butterfly Pea Flower substitute

Other butterfly pea flower substitutes

2Red cabbage water

3Blue food colouring

4Hibiscus

5Blue curacao

6Nothing, if the colour change is the recipe