Make Your Own All-Natural Egg Dye
It’s time to make some eggs to dye for!
I’ve been making my Easter eggs with all-natural coloring for years and yes, I’m still a kid at heart and love doing it each year.
If you’ve never dyed eggs naturally, you have to try it at least once. It’s so much fun, especially for the kiddos, and the colors are just beautiful. I absolutely love the way they look when they’re all colored, and you will too.
I use foods like red cabbage, beets, onion skins, and turmeric to create my dyes and some of these ingredients you can save for meals after they’ve been cooked. A win-win!
So let’s learn how to make your natural dyes.
First start by choosing your colors. I do all of these, but you may only want to do 1 or 2.
Red/pink: you need ~4 cups of beets, chopped
Orange: you need ~4 cups of yellow onion skins
Yellow: you need ~2 tablespoons of turmeric powder, or ~3 tablespoons of fresh turmeric, shredded). NOTE: the powder may stain your pot or plastic Tupperware yellow (I learned this the hard way), but I found that using glass to do the dye is perfectly fine.
Blue: you need ~4 cups of red cabbage, chopped
First start by boiling your eggs.
I swear everyone has a different method for hard boiled eggs, so use your own that works. But here’s how I boil mine at a high altitude.
Place the eggs in a large saucepan and fill with water so there's about 1 inch of water covering the eggs. Bring the water to a boil and allow to boil for 10 minutes. Do not add a lid. Remove from heat, drain the hot water and refill with icy cold water. Allow to cool and dry on a towel.
Now it’s time to get cookin’.
Once you have your choice colors, place the ingredients in a pot using the amount listed above. Add 2 tablespoons of white vinegar and about 4 cups of water to the pot. Be sure to cover the ingredients if they are not fully covered.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat allowing the ingredients to simmer for 30 minutes total. Strain the dye and put it into a cup or bowl for coloring your eggs. Wait for the mixture to become completely cooled before you begin to dye your eggs.
Be sure to save your beets and cabbage for lunch or dinner. I will add the cooked beets to a salad or roast on high heat to get them a little crispy. The cooked cabbage I have used in a soup for the next day. Just add it towards the end of soup cook time.
But how long do the eggs not to sit in the dye?
Here’s the thing, natural dyes will require more time than your store-bought dye kits. But that’s the beauty of it. To give you an idea of length of time and color intensity, I provided a chart below for you to reference. The longer your eggs sit in the dye, the darker they will be.
Now I usually use white, organic, cage-free eggs, however you can use brown eggs too. Brown eggs will usually be a slightly darker color but whatever you choose, they will be stunning.
There you have it. The most stunning eggs you will ever see. I hope you try this as you won’t regret it. Yes, it will take longer, but they dye is plant-based and completely natural, the food is reusable, and the effort is worth it.
Peace & Love.
Nikki
