The onoto is widely known for being a spice and at the same time the coloring par excellence of many tropical countries and hot lands like Venezuela, Mexico and Brazil. While it is true that the onoto is not characterized by aromatizing, it leaves a profound effect on the taste, color and smoothness of the palate in which it participates.
Those triangular red seeds that we sell in the market, and that we probably saw from small, that our family was heating in oil, are the seeds of the onoto. In nature we find them inside a thorny fruit of small trees, whose scientific name is Bixa orellana, belonging to the Bixaceae family. This plant is native to Tropical America, and is widely used from Mexico to northern South America, the United States, even in other parts of the world, such as Europe, the Philippines, Vietnam and Beijing. It receives a wide variety of common names, such as: achiote, achote, bija, bijo, caituco or urucú, among many others.