Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Color an Easter Egg Without Dye


Sure anyone can color an egg using all the fancy dyes they have. Personally I don't care for eating blue and green eggs though. When my siblings and I were kids, my mom did eggs with us the way her mom taught her. It's simple, very easy, and the results can be spectacular. I did one up last night to walk you through with a pictorial, so you too can try it out for Easter.

What You'll Need:

Eggs. 
However many you want to do, and in whatever size you like.


Onions. 
Or to be more specific, their peels. My mom used to save all the dry peelings for a month in advance. Roughly 1 peel = 1 egg.


A pot.
With water high enough to boil eggs as you normally would.


Thread.


Instructions:


As carefully as you can, remove the peel from the onion(s). The goal here is to try and keep it as much as possible, in one piece.


Next, fit your egg into the peel and wrap it up inside.


Use thread to tie it up so the peel won't come off in the pot. The thread will also serve the double purpose of pressing the peel against the the egg, which allows for a better design. I've gone simple just to show you, but wrap it up however you like.


Place in pot and set it to boil.


As you can see, often eggs will float because of the peel. So make sure to turn it over after it boils. Once the peel boils a bit, the eggs should be able to sink. Just like with regular boiled eggs, reduce heat to light boil.


After 15 - 20 minutes remove from heat and let egg(s) cool off before removing the wrapping.


This actually has nothing to do with anything, but if you have strawberries in the fridge, why not enjoy one while you wait?


The Results:


I don't have the best lighting in my kitchen and I did this at night, so I can't properly do it justice. The egg is now yellow with purplish lines running throughout.


Up a bit closer. You can see better the cool designs left by the onion peel.


It's as simple as that. You can also use red onions just as easily. But the key is pressure. If the peel isn't securely wrapped around the egg, it's not going to leave a good impression.

18 comments:

  1. That is really cool. I would like to see what a red onion dye job would look like. Thanks for the tip!

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  2. Wow! Your mom is so creative!

    I wish boiling eggs would turn them into strawberries. Mmmm. :)

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  3. mmmm fresh strawberries!!!

    and what a great idea!!!! we dyed a whole bunch of eggs last year and they were bright! but we ended up throwing most of them away, because there is something strange about eating colored eggs.... idk what it is. i just don't. i know they'll taste the same.... well actually i don't know that, because i won't eat them, but that's what i've been told.

    you should try it sometime....

    and let me know how that goes. ;)

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  4. That seems very cool and ecological or something. Thanks for sharing that. How cool!


    Tales Of A Fourth Grade Nothing

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  5. That looks beautiful; I love strawberries. Oh, the egg trick is awesome too. Very cool.
    xoRobyn

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  6. I had those exact same plates. Corell, I think. I bought them way back because they will not break! I tried and threw it, but Nope.

    Now I have other plates.

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  7. Will cabbage work? (In case you want green.) How about eggplant? (For purple.) Have you ever experimented? Your method makes me want to try all sorts of things. Thanks for sharing.

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  8. Rep, I never tried cabbage. I'm not sure if it would do more than color it. Because the onions have the veins running through the peels it creates these lines.

    The red onions make the eggs look like Jupiter.

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  9. How does it taste?

    It it silly that I though you playing a joke on us.... At first, I thought you were telling us that the egg turned into a strawberry.... I'm a bit slow today....

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  10. What trickery is this???

    LOL, that's really cool, and probably smells a hell of a lot better than vinegar.

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  11. That's awesome! How in the hell do people come up with this stuff?

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  12. TS! I love this! This Easter I would love you to repost this to our blog. I might even do it with my kids and try some different colors. So cool. Thank you for sharing, thanks for linking up!

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  13. Does it give the egg an oniony taste???

    Oh yes - - - I eat my Easter Eggs.

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  14. Anna, be my guest, though you could probably do it better. I had horrible lighting.

    Keetha, Doesn't effect the egg flavor-wise. I eat mine too.

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  15. LOL, At Deborah.

    Yay! TS! I'm holding you to it. And I'm going to link it up and were going to be stars!

    I wondered the same thing, Keepie.

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  16. I bet you could color them HOT PINK with beets.

    What would blue berries do to them?????? Dark purply blue???

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