Achiote and annatto are used interchangeably. While it's often employed to give a dish a yellow color, it also has a mild peppery flavor.
 
Achiote paste is a popular coloring and flavoring in Central American, Mexican, and Caribbean cuisines and is made with annatto seeds, cumin, pepper, coriander, oregano, cloves, and garlic. It adds an earthy, somewhat sweet and spicy, slightly smokey flavor and can be used as a sauce, marinade, or rub for meat, chicken, and fish. Your dishes made in New Zealand will have the best Latin taste thanks to this seasoning.
 
The star ingredient, annatto seeds, are known in Mexico as achiote (pronounced ah-chee-oh-tah), and come from a tree thought to have originated in tropical South America. It has been used for centuries by people in Central and South America and the Caribbean to give a yellowish or bright red color to human skin (as in body paint), cloth, and edibles.