Easter is around the corner. You know what that means? Colored eggs of all sorts – chicken eggs, chocolate eggs, jelly bean eggs – all eggs in a wide variety of colors. Here is a way to color your chicken eggs the all-natural way so that we can actually eat the eggs right after its been colored. I hate to waste food, so for years I felt bad when good hardboiled eggs were used to color and make designs with regular paint color – and then when I found out the eggs just got thrown away after all the fun, I just couldn’t bring us to color any. By coloring eggs the all-natural way we can actually eat the eggs after we have fun coloring them.
Coloring eggs with natural ingredients found in our pantry and refrigerator is an idea I got from my friend Iya. She shared with me some photos of her Easter eggs that she had colored a beautiful blue, yellow and pale brown the way her Mom used to color them back in Russia. When Iya told me what she used to get those dreamy colors – I was so surprised. I tell you folks, it’s pretty amazing the beautiful colors that come out of nature. The cool thing is you would never guess what natural ingredients were used to color these eggs. My favorite color being the beautiful Robin’s egg blue and the shimmery dark grayish green eggs.
Can you guess what we used to color these eggs the all-natural way?
Answer:
Blue colored eggs were made by using red cabbage! Can you believe it? I was so surprised when Iya told me that’s how she got the gorgeous blue color on the eggs.
Yellow colored eggs were made by using yellow onion peels. Go figure! Iya’s Mom back in Russia would go around to all the grocery stores asking them if she could take their discarded yellow onion peels. Iya said you need a ton of yellow onion peels to get the golden color, but me being Indian – guess what I used to get my golden colored eggs? Turmeric!
Pale brown colored eggs were made by using old coffee and coffee grinds.
Grayish Green Colored Eggs. Sri suggested using a berry tea bag that she noticed made my tea dark reddish purple to get a red or pink colored egg. So I gave this a try. The color we got was nothing like we expected. We ended up with grayish green colored eggs. But the best part of this gorgeous color was how shimmery and iridescent it looked!
How to color eggs the all-natural way.
Make hard-boiled eggs and set aside. Use white eggs not the brown eggs.
Blue-colored hard-boiled eggs:
- Bring 3 cups water to a boil. Add 2 cups of cut red cabbage and cook cabbage for 5 minutes.
- You will notice the water changing color right away to ink blue. Even the cabbage turns blue!
- Turn the stove off and let the water come to room temperature. Next add the hard-boiled eggs and submerge them in the cabbage water. Let the eggs sit over night in the water.
- The next morning the eggs will be a Robin’s egg blue color!
Yellow colored Easter eggs:
I didn’t have the large quantity of yellow onion peels needed to color the eggs yellow, so I used turmeric. Being Indian we always have turmeric in our spice box so I thought let me give it a try. It worked!
- Bring 3-4 cups water to a boil. Add 2 tsp turmeric powder and stir. Cool the water to slightly warm.
- Submerge 4 eggs in the turmeric water and let it sit overnight.
- The next morning the eggs should be a golden yellow in color.
Brown colored eggs:
- In a pot place any old leftover coffee and any coffee grounds you have left. Add 3 – 4 cups warm water and stir.
- Add 4 hard boiled eggs and let it sit overnight.
- The next morning the eggs should be a gorgeous pale brown in color with little specks and swirls.
Grayish Green Colored Eggs.
Steep 4-5 berry tea bags in hot water until you see the water change to dark red in color. Let the water come to room temperature then add the eggs and submerge completely in the water. Steep overnight and you end up with a gorgeous greenish grey colored egg.
Pink Colored Eggs are elusive. I asked Hitesh what he thought would work better to get a plum/pink color on my eggs – red wine or beetroot? Hitesh said definitely beetroot. We figured beetroot bleeds that pink color like crazy on our hands; why not see if it will work in coloring eggs a gorgeous pink color as well. The color we ended up with was pretty gross 😝. A pale yucky brownish red that looked pretty ugly. We haven’t figured out a way to get a pink colored egg the all-natural way. Have any ideas? Please let me know!
How to use all these hard-boiled eggs.
If you have lots of eggs leftover from an Easter lunch or party there are many recipes that use these good for you chicken eggs. Favorites include egg salad and egg sandwiches, but how about using the eggs in a curry? Try this recipe for a roasted veggie and egg curry – yummy 😋. Or an egg curry in a creamy cashew sauce, or tamarind sauce, or how about egg curry with coconut milk? Give any variation of egg curry a try. For lots of recipes for eggs curries, stews, and noodles check out Simstadka egg curry recipe from blogger Simmi Karunakaran. With alll these recipes there will be plenty of ways to use up those naturally colored hard boiled Easter eggs.
Once the family saw how much fun it was to color eggs the all-natural way, everyone had suggestions for coloring them 😀. I was getting ideas like “Let’s try blueberries, blackberries, or raspberries, and pomegranate juice.” Experiment and have fun with this! You will be surprised how much the family gets involved in figuring out what egg-colors can be created with which natural ingredients.
Don’t let those Easter eggs go to waste, instead color them the all-natural way and then eat them, curry them, and use them in sandwiches and salads.
