Natural Easter Egg Dyes
How to Make Natural Easter Egg Dyes -Video
Making your own natural Easter egg dyes is not quite as simple as dissolving Paas pellets, but it is much more fun (it also takes longer so if you’re an important business person with a plane to catch, then just get the Paas kit).
When you use natural egg dyes made from plants, the colors are somewhat unpredictable. No two eggs ever turn out the exact same shade, but they are always beautiful.
Here are instructions to make natural egg dyes in red, blue, and yellow. By soaking your eggs first in one color, then another, you can then create orange, green and purple eggs.
I did a LOT of experimenting with different vegetables and spices (literally 5 dozen eggs worth) and while it’s possible to get greenish eggs from spinach and purplish eggs from grape juice and orangish eggs from chili powder, I much prefer the simpler 3-color system. For one thing, you only need to hunt down three jars for this system and for another, it’s cheaper. And what am I if not a cheapskate? Doing it this way is also a fun exercise for young kids in primary and secondary colors.
One more tiperooski before we begin. Don’t forget the vinegar! Adding a tablespoon to each pint (or so) of dye allows the dye to penetrate the eggs shells, giving a deeper and more even color. Oh! And another tiny tip: when making secondary colors, soak the eggs in the first dye, let dry, then soak in the second dye (in the order I’ve given below for best results).
Ack! And another thing: natural dyes begin to fade after about 48 hours (especially the beet dye, it’s a little weak) so make these the day before the Easter Bunny visits for the brightest colors on Easter morn. For real now, let’s dye some eggs!
Natural Egg Dye Recipe – Printable Card
PrintNatural Easter Egg Dyes
- Yield: 12 1x
Ingredients
- Red dye: 3-4 red beets (about 1 pound)
- Blue dye: 1/2 head purple cabbage (about 1 pound)
- Yellow dye: 2 tablespoons turmeric powder
- White vinegar
- Water
- 12 hard boiled white eggs
- Equipment:
- 3 to 6 wide-mouth jars or similar containers
- Strainer
- Tongs for dipping and removing eggs from dye
- Rubber bands, for making striped eggs
Instructions
- RED (PINK) EGGS: Scrub the beets well to remove dirt. Chop into small pieces. Combine in a pot with 3 cups water. Cover, bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes.
- Strain into one or two jars and add 1 tablespoon white vinegar to each jar.
- Carefully place eggs into dye to cover (for stripes, wrap a rubber band around the egg before putting it in the dye)
- For pink eggs, leave the eggs for 10-30 minutes. For rust-red eggs, leave for 1 hour. Longer than one hour will result in a yucky brown. Not recommended.
- You may lightly rinse excess dye by dipping into plain water, but don’t rinse with running water. **The beet dye is delicate and not permanent until it’s dry.**
- Set eggs onto paper towels or lay them across cups of the egg carton to dry.
- BLUE EGGS: Coarsely chop red cabbage and put into a pot with 3 cups water. Cover, bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes.
- Strain into one or two jars and add 1 tablespoon white vinegar to each jar.
- Carefully place eggs into dye to cover (for stripes, wrap a rubber band around the egg before putting it in the dye)
- For pale blue eggs, leave for 30 minutes. For Robin’s Egg blue, leave for 2-3 hours. For deep aqua or royal blue, leave 8-12 hours.
- Rinse with clean water and set to dry on paper towels or lay across cups of egg carton.
- YELLOW EGGS: Combine 2 cups water with 2 tablespoons turmeric in a pot. Cover, bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes.
- Pour into jar and add 1 tablespoon white vinegar. **Turmeric dye will stain countertops! Protect your surfaces when working with turmeric dye**
- Carefully place eggs into dye to cover (for stripes, wrap a rubber band around the egg before putting it in the dye)
- For bright yellow eggs, leave for 10-30 minutes. For goldenrod eggs, leave overnight.
- Rinse with clean water and set to dry on paper towels or lay across cups of egg carton.
- PURPLE EGGS: Red Cabbage (1 hour) and let dry, then Beets (30 minutes)
- ORANGE EGGS: Turmeric (30 minutes) and let dry, then Beets (10 minutes)
- GREEN EGGS: Turmeric (30 minutes) and let dry, then Cabbage (30-60 minutes)
Notes
Use this method for easy peel hard boiled eggs. Be sure to use white eggs for dying. Boiled eggs can be made a week or two ahead of time and refrigerated.
More Colors!
You can make onion skin dye, too. Take about 4 cups of loosely measured dry onion skins, boil in 2-3 cups water for 30 minutes and then strain. Yellow onion skins make brassy orange eggs and red onion skins make deep brick-red eggs. To me, they look like fossilized dinosaur eggs!
From back left: Blue dye soaked 12 hours, 30 mins, 2 hours; dark green; light green; Turmeric soaked overnight and 30 mins; orange; Beets soaked 1 hour and 30 mins; purple; front right egg is yellow onion skin dye
Get the glass pot I used in the video! (Amazon affiliate link)
17 Comments
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Hi Hilah I just made a couple I your organic dye eggs and they just turned out perfectly, thank you so much✔️
Wow! That was so fast! Thanks for letting me know 🙂
Have a great weekend, Sarah!
Oil on a tissue will make the eggs glisten and bring out the colour intensity
Painting patterns with molten candle wax before dying will leave undyed patterns
Cheers
Hello Hila, not only an neat way to color eggs but I also notice a huge increase in video quality as to editing and camera work. Good job all around!! Really precious Varmit you have there also!!
Larry
LOVE these Hilah!
These are the best natural-dyed eggs I have seen! I have always wanted to try these…I don’t have kids and my husband doesn’t like eggs so I haven’t dyed Easter eggs in years and years. But I might have to try these someday. We have lots of friends with kids so maybe one year I could arrange an Easter egg hunt for them. 🙂
I hope you can try it someday, Jen! It really is fun to see each egg come out of the dye because there is so much variation from egg to egg 🙂
I tried cabbage colour this year and they look like dragons eggs. https://www.instagram.com/p/BDaV_nbqzOq/?taken-by=barbaradekleva
Those look cool!
Any suggestions on how to use the leftover dye?? We have loved coloring our eggs
I guess you could try dying fabric?
I rarely leave reviews but I was so happy with how our Easter eggs turned out that I wanted to share it out. Last year I used Paas dye from our local grocery market & the results were abysmal – hardly any color. My sister said she used organic or natural dye she ordered on Amazon. This year I thought I’d do what my sister did. The options were so plentiful that I searched Google for the best organic or natural Easter egg dyes and that’s how I found your post. I thought that nothing could be worse than last year so why not try. And omg, we were thrilled with results. I’m never going back to store-bought dyes! From now on I’m using these recipes! I did add extra vinegar to the dyes and I accidentally cooked the tumeric for 30 minutes instead of 15, but everything turned out beautifully.
How exciting! I agree the colors with homemade natural dyes are really gorgeous. Thanks for writing
We are wondering, do you recommended letting the dyes cool down before you submerge the eggs?
Yes, let it cool to lukewarm at least, just for burn prevention
Should the eggs be kept in the refrigerator while soaking for multiple hours and/or overnight? Does the cold temperature change the colors with them?
I would prob refrigerate them if you’re going to leave them overnight. It shouldn’t affect the color, but they will continue to get darker the longer they sit in the dye