Today I’ve asked a fellow “real food” blogger to share her natural Easter egg dye method with us…so please “meet” Christina with Spoonfed (a Jamie Oliver blog of the month)!
So here’s what we do come Easter time, egg dyeing at its simplest (with recipes inspired by my friend Kris Bordessa of Attainable Sustainable):
1. Hard-boil a bunch of eggs. Doesn’t matter if they’re white or pastel or brown. Each one lends itself to great color variations. (But choose local, pastured eggs if you can. Check out Local Harvest for why that’s important and where you can find good eggs near you.)
2. On your stove, set out four pots* with two cups of water each.
3. To one pot, add a hefty teaspoon of turmeric powder (that’s your yellow). To another, add a couple handfuls of chopped red beets, either fresh or jarred (that’s pink). To a third, add two cups of frozen blueberries or blackberries (your blue). Bring the pots to boiling, then let them simmer five minutes.
4. For the fourth pot, boil the water separately, then turn off the heat and add the contents of six chlorophyll capsules, which can be found in natural-foods stores (that’s your green).
5. After everything has cooled, strain out the chunky bits, then add a teaspoon of vinegar to each the beets (pink) and berries (blue).
6. Dunk eggs. Maybe mark them with crayons for fun designs. Keep dunking and cross-dunking and letting them soak a bit until you get colors you like. Be happy.
*If you don’t have four pots, use a teapot to boil the water for the chlorophyll capsules. That one doesn’t need to simmer, so you can easily pour out two cups of water and mix the green in a separate bowl.
I followed directions and they were really pale, kids were not having much fun so I found a box of unopened food dyes in my drawer in back, thank God it saved the day! Sorry but this just does not work well, but it did make my kids actually appreciate the dyes they ended up with and I was very grateful for happy kids. hey I did try anyways.
Shirley: I’m sorry this didn’t work well for you (not sure what color eggs you used, what colors you were expecting, etc.) But I (and others) can attest that it did actually work for us! :-)
After learning about how artificial coloring isn’t good, we have been trying to steer clear of it. However, I am wondering why is it bad for the egg shells to be dyed with the artificial food coloring? We don’t eat that part.
Hi Ashley. The dye can easily bleed through the shell.