It's almost Easter and you haven't managed to dye Easter eggs yet? No problem, we'll show you how you can easily conjure up brightly colored Easter eggs from the food you have at home - without any chemicals!
For this you need:
- (old) pots
- Eggs
- Spoon/ladle
- Vinegar
Natural colors (one of the following ingredients per color):
- Red - raspberries, red onion skins, beetroot, mallow tea
- Orange - brown onion skins, carrots, rooibos tea
- Yellow - Turmeric root or powder, curry powder, chamomile flowers
- Green - spinach, parsley, basil, grasses
- Blue - blueberries, red cabbage, elderberry juice
- Indigo/Violet - blackberries, blackcurrants, acai powder
And this is how it works:
Step 1: First you boil the eggs for four to eleven minutes, depending on the desired degree of hardness. Make sure you not prick the eggs before cooking so that no color gets inside during the dyeing process. In principle, it doesn't matter whether you use brown or white eggs, but the color comes out a little better on the white background.
Step 2: By rubbing vinegar into the eggshell, you will ensure that dirt and discolouration are removed and the egg absorbs the color better.
Step 3: Then you prepare the food for the coloring process. The rule is that the finer and smaller the material, the better and richer the color result. Therefore chop or puree your materials before you put on the color broth.
Step 4: Now you can make the colored decoction by boiling down the ingredients. For this you take about 200-300g (fresh) or 4-5 tablespoons (dried) natural product for 1 liter of water. If you use herbs, leaves, flowers or powder, you should soak them for 30 minutes before you start cooking. During the cooking process, you have to make sure that the brew is only gently simmering at a medium to low temperature so that the liquid does not boil away. After an hour, your color brew is ready.
Step 5: Now put the eggs in the color broth and leave them there for at least an hour or preferably overnight so that you can achieve a richer color result.
Step 6: After drying, you can optionally rub the eggs with some cooking oil to give them a nice shine. We deliberately avoided it on our eggs in order to get a matt look.
Our conclusion:
Although the natural colors are paler than the conventional colors from the shops, we like the delicate pastel look even better and it goes perfectly with spring! You have to feel your way around and try out which materials are suitable for dyeing, but how do you say it? Practice makes perfect!
We wish you a happy Easter and lots of fun imitating!
Author: Eliane Wikert
