Apr. 15—ROCHESTER — Eggs have been a hot topic in the news lately — at least their prices have.
However, it’s the time of year the grocery staple is the center of a colorful spring holiday tradition.
If the prices are making some people think about scaling back dying Easter eggs, there are ways to save some money and add some do-it-yourself fun to the tradition.
Instead of buying a dye kit, there are regular household foods that can be used to add a shock of color to a white egg shell.
The University of Minnesota Extension has an online resource on how to create natural dyes at extension.umn.edu/yd-curriculum/natural-dyes-across-color-wheel.
Some of the common items the Extension lists that can be used for bright colors typical for Easter eggs include:
Red onion skins for an orange-red color; turmeric powder for bright yellow; beets for pink; red cabbage or blueberries for blue.
A kitchen test of the items found varying success. We took about two cups of each raw ingredient and boiled them with about two cups of water for 15 minutes to bring out the color. We then bathed the eggs in the natural dyes in various combinations for five minutes each. We dyed the eggs while both the bath and eggs were still warm but cool enough to handle.
The red onion put out a nice orange color which took to the white egg well while falling short of a deep red. We used beet powder and found that it coats the egg with a nice light pink. A combination of the two worked well for a convincing red.
Anyone who cooks with turmeric (and has inadvertently stained their spouse’s favorite porcelain-lined pan) will know turmeric will stain. As a dye, it stained the egg shell a bright yellow.
After 15 minutes of boiling, the red cabbage created a brilliant blue broth. It was so blue it looked fake. However, it didn’t stick to the egg shell very well and resulted in a pale, light blue color. A second try with a bit of vinegar in hopes the acid might make the egg more receptive to the dye resulted in turning the dye bath into a pale pink and absolutely nothing sticking to the egg.
Blueberries came through for a dark blue dye that stuck to the eggs. A combination of blueberry and turmeric powder resulted in a cool celery green egg.
Hoping for purple, we tried blueberry dyed eggs in combination with the red onion and beet powder dye. The dye looked a beautiful purple but the result on the egg was a drab grayish mauve. The same happened with just red onion and blueberry. A bath in a combination blueberry dye and beet powder dye was a slightly better result but still far short of a satisfying Easter purple.
The entire process didn’t take much time and used items we literally had on hand in the kitchen. Trying this could be a fun way to color Easter eggs without making an extra trip to the store. It could be a good way to add an extra step of involvement for kids. Using natural dye from food around the house also cuts down the danger of a little one ingesting some chemical dye.