Natural Egg Dyeing

NATURAL EGG DYEING

The tradition of dyeing eggs goes back to medieval times, used as a way to celebrate Easter and spring. If you do this with your kiddos, making your own egg dyes is a great way to ensure that your craft is non-toxic and that you can eat the eggs afterward. We suggest using them in our Truffled Egg Salad after the Easter egg hunt is over! Natural dyes can sometimes produce unexpected results, so don’t be surprised if your red cabbage dye yields blue eggs. Note that natural dyes are less instantaneous than the boxed food coloring type, so this may be a project best revealed the next morning!

INGREDIENTS

1 dozen white eggs, hard boiled and cooled

For each dye, start with 2 cups water and 1 Tablespoon white vinegar. Then add one of the following:

For Red/Pink: 2 cups chopped beets

For Blue: 2 cups shredded cabbage

For Yellow: 2 Tbsp turmeric powder

DIRECTIONS

Bring each solution to a boil, then turn to low and simmer for 30-45 minutes until desired color is reached. Keep in mind that the eggs will be much lighter than the dye. Remove liquid from heat and allow to cool to room temperature. Pour the dye through a strainer to remove vegetable material. Pour into mason jars or shallow bowls.

Add 1-2 eggs per jar and allow to sit at least 30 minutes, up to overnight to desired color. Carefully take the eggs out and place on a drying rack.

While experimenting for this post, we discovered that the primary color dyes worked best as a base layer and that combining these colors yielded best results for orange, green and purple dye. Feel free to experiment with timing as well as mixing colors! We also tried matcha as a green dye as well as paprika as orange, but these results were not as good as using primary colors alone!

For Green: Dye in yellow for at least 30 minutes, then blue additional 30 minutes

For Purple: Dye in red for at least 30 minutes, then blue additional 30 minutes

For Orange: Dye in yellow for at least 30 minutes, then red additional 30 minutes