Herbs and Eggs

Natural Egg Dyes

Many people find the earthy tones of herb- and food-colored eggs to be far more attractive than the Easter Bunny’s candy colors. Many herbal dye plants, used traditionally to color wool and other natural fibers, can be used for Easter eggs in place of commercial dyes. In fact, in the pre-Christian days of egg coloring, peasants boiled their eggs with plants or flowers because they couldn’t afford to use gold leaf used by the wealthy. After hard-cooking your eggs (see instructions at right), try these options for decorating Easter eggs.

To begin, bring each dye ingredient (listed below) to a boil with 2 cups of water; strain the dyes into cups and allow to cool. Add two tablespoons of vinegar to each cup of dye.

Dye the eggs by dipping them into the cups, submerging each egg completely until it reaches an appealing color. Leave eggs in the dye longer for deeper colors. If one color doesn’t darken as you’d like, set the cup with the dye and the egg in the refrigerator for a few hours. Try using two different dyes on one egg to create different colors, or dye half of each egg in a different color. Enjoy not only the natural colors but the variation in how each dye adheres to different eggs.

Ingredients for color:

Gold: Handful of yellow onion skins
Yellow: 2 tablespoons turmeric, 1/2 cup dried marigolds, goldenrod, or cosmos, or a handful of carrot tops
Green: Handful of coltsfoot
Blue: Handful of woad or 2 cups chopped red cabbage*
Pink: 2 cups chopped beets
Purple: 1 cup frozen blueberries
Brown: 2 tablespoons coffee grounds or 4 black tea bags

* For best results with this color, add botanicals to the water while cooking eggs.