04/05/2026
Easter eggs
With the renewed interest in artificial dyes, which are often derived from petroleum, and their negative impact on health, primarily behavioral and neurobehavioral but also associated with cancer, and allergens; I wanted to test the info regarding naturally died eggs I’ve been reading online.
I do have natural food dye in my cupboard, which offers muted colors compared to the red dye 40 we grew up with, but I wanted to try using stuff from my cupboard.
Synopsis: save yourself time - use crushed items directly. Read on to learn the details.
We know most of the stuff online is not reliable, that is not a new phenomenon. Old wives tales, urban myths and fake influencers have been around forever. A good example is 1945 classic movie Christmas in Connecticut, where a single female in the city writes magazine articles pretending to be a farm wife and mother. So, I looked up about 10 different articles resulting from 3 different worded searches.
Supposedly, things like turmeric, cabbage, beets, blueberries, parsley, spinach, onion peel, etc could give some nice colors to the eggs if they were soaked long enough. One article states double soaks make a bigger difference than longer soaks. All used some vinegar. One stated to Not use vinegar with the onion peel. All stated the longer the soak the brighter the color. Everything stated hibiscus comes out almost black so I didn’t even try it. (All the goths will love it!)
I scrounged through my cupboards and found the following items:
juice from can of beets,
1 c spinach,
1 T turmeric,
1 T butterfly pea tea
½ c frozen blueberries.
I boiled all (except beet juice) with 1 c of water and 1 T of vinegar. Simmer for 30 min and then cooled before putting with eggs. And in case you didn’t know – adding any acidic item to butterfly pea tea will turn it from blue to violet.
I looked at the spinach water and there is no way this will produce any kind of green. I looked at the butterfly pea tea and don’t have much hope for it either. Considering the color of my hands and dishes from blueberries, beets and turmeric after cooking, I decided these are probably legit.
Along the way, while waiting for a pot to become available I had my frozen blueberries sitting in a plastic baggy. After I put the blueberries in the pot to boil I put the assigned eggs in the baggy as they wait till the dye juice was ready. I didn’t rinse the bag…..
And this is where everything took a turn and I felt I was led astray.
When I pulled the eggs out of the blueberry bag, 15 minutes later, they were beautiful! I wiped them off, the color was still there. (consider just letting them dry at this stage) When I rinsed them off, some of the color muted but still not bad. I wondered if just a drop of vinegar really would help with holding the dye on. In general, my advice at this limited amount of testing…. Just squish up the beets, blueberries, and every soft colorful thing you know and just coat them and let them set for a bit. Maybe add a drop of vinegar (because we’ve always been told to add vinegar when dyeing clothes.)
Instead of a plastic bag I would recommend wrapping them in cloth squished with chosen items.
Since I had already used all the eggs in the house, I couldn’t do additional research with my newfound knowledge.
With the dye baths, little difference between 1 hr and 3 hr. Purple cabbage is reported to be great using this method.
I don’t think there will be an easy green. Maybe try a double soak with a yellow item then a blue item, or cheat and get green egg laying chickens like easter egger or olive egger.
Next year, I will definitely try my own approach and just get items to a squishy state and paste it on the eggs for a few minutes.
Final photo:
Beet Juice, Blueberry, Spinach, Butterfly Pea Tea – 8 hrs in dye bath
Tumeric – 3 hrs in dye bath
Little bit of oil to shine
