Natural Easter Egg Dye

I decided that this year we were going to go the natural route when it was time for us to color Easter eggs.  After seeing a few posts on Facebook, I decided that we would try using turmeric, purple cabbage, beets, and yellow onion skins to dye our eggs.  This way was definitely much more time consuming, but it was fun to try something different, and it's always better to not use unnecessary chemicals and additives whenever possible.

Here are the measurements I used for our eggs:

1 1/2 tbsp turmeric

3 cups water

3 medium beets, shredded

6 cups water

2 cups packed (3lb bags worth) yellow onion peels

4 cups water

1/2 head small red cabbage, chopped

6 cups water

Placing each of the "dyes" into separate pans, bring to a simmer and simmer for at least 15 minutes, up to 60 minutes (I simmered all of mine for 30 minutes).  The longer you simmer, the deeper the color will be, but also keep in mind that the longer you simmer, the more water will become evaporated.  Once they have simmered, strain and put the liquid into a quart sized mason jar. Here are the colors of mine after simmering for 30 minutes:

Add 1 tbsp. of vinegar per 1 cup of dye in each jar.  Then, add 3-4 eggs per jar.  We did 3 per jar - one of each of "our" eggs (a light brownish color) and 2 white eggs from the store.  Seal and place in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours.

The longer you allow the eggs to sit, the darker the color.  We removed four after about 15 hours and they looked like this:

We decided to wait for the rest and pulled them out after a total of 27 hours.  Here are all of our eggs - our fresh (light brown) eggs are on the top row, white eggs in the last two rows.  The bottom row are the eggs we removed after 15 hours.

Now, they didn't turn out nearly as perfect as they do in those Facebook videos.  But, that's ok!  It was fun and I think this will become our new way to color eggs.  I love how the eggs are all different, and I especially love that they are all natural.  I'm already thinking about what other things we can use for dye next year!

I mean, look at how pretty those are!!  Best of all, if you have a cracked egg or two, you don't need to let it go to waste.  If a little beet or turmeric juice seeps into your hardboiled egg, it's only going to add benefits to your nutrition :)

Happy Easter Everyone!!

~ Sara :)