I am obviously a little late to any Easter related post. But, in my defense, we eat hard boiled eggs year round in these parts, so I excuse myself. Every year when I dye my eggs, I think … this is so easy, why don’t I dye them all the time? Just for fun? I’ve always thought it would be a cute way to get children to eat those protein packed snacks .. got a little girl who loves all things pink? Make her special pink eggs. You can make something really good for you(or them), really fun, really easily. Just a thought. Onto the project ~
I did some naturally dyed eggs with what I had in my kitchen already. So, we’re talking red cabbage and turmeric, which gave me blue and yellow eggs. We had already hard boiled a dozen white and a dozen brown eggs, so I experimented a bit to see how the color would turn, using six of each.
With the brown eggs, the cabbage ones turned a little too gray (not happening next year) and the turmeric turned them a darker version of the brown eggs they started out to be (but with a little orange tint, again, not happening next year) — You can expand your palette with beets (for pink) and spinach (green) and onion skins (purple). Needless to say, next time I plan on using all white eggs.
It’s so easy, too. Follow my instructions, please, because if you look it up you will find about 10 more steps that I really don’t think are necessary. Unless you like to make more dishes and complicate things, which I do not! Have fun .. and enjoy that egg salad! 😉
What to do:
1) put dye source into saucepan with cold water
(I chopped some cabbage* and used about 4 tbs of turmeric)
2) bring to a boil, lower, simmer for 15-20 minutes
3) use slotted spoon to remove any vegetables
4) let mixture and eggs both sit to reach room temperature (20 minutes)
5) mix 1 tablespoon white vinegar for every cup of water
6) submerse your eggs in your mixture
7) cover, put pots in fridge, let sit anywhere from 2 hours to overnight**
8) remove eggs gently with tongs, place back into egg crate, let dry completely
9) enjoy!
* I used a quarter of a head of cabbage (and cooked the rest for dinner!)
** mine sat overnight, for time reasons, which also gave me deeper colors
PS- in previous years I wrapped string around the eggs before dying to create a fun striped effect. Next time, I might rotate the eggs in the mixture half way through dying to avoid the spots on the egg where you can tell they were resting on the bottom of the pot.
PPS- with all this vinegar (between the actual hard boiling process and then the dying), these eggs peeled like a dream!
PPPS- EGG SALAD!!!!