DIY Easter Egg Dye

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Learn how to make DIY Easter egg dye with this easy tutorial! You can dye Easter eggs without food coloring using vegetable scraps, spices, and vinegar.

Making DIY Easter egg dye is a fun activity this time of year. There are many different natural dyes you can try in your kitchen.

To make homemade Easter egg dye, you boil water and add various vegetable scraps or spices. Then add vinegar, and you have a vibrant dye to color your hard boiled eggs.

DIY Easter Egg Dye Combinations

Here are four combinations I use to make homemade egg dye:

Pink: Chop one medium beet and boil it in a pan with 4 cups of water. Strain the beet chunks and bring the water to room temperature, then add 2 tablespoons of vinegar.

Red:  Boil a tablespoon of paprika in a cup of water. Bring the water to room temperature and add 2 teaspoons of vinegar.

Blue:  Chop ¼ head of red cabbage and boil it in 4 cups of water. Strain the cabbage and bring the water to room temperature, then add 2 tablespoons of vinegar.

Yellow:  Take the skins off 4 onions and simmer them in 2 cups of water for 20 minutes. Strain the onion skins and bring the water to room temperature, then add 2 teaspoons of vinegar.

Before starting these DIY Easter egg dye recipes, we noticed that the beets and the red cabbage were about the same color, so we were curious if they would really yield different colored eggs. Also, after boiling the cabbage, the water looked purple instead of blue. We were curious again, wondering how this would give us blue eggs. I was most skeptical about the onion skins, wondering how exactly they were going to make our eggs yellow.

The colors are more vibrant if the eggs are soaked overnight, so that’s what we did with most of our eggs. We did pull out a few eggs after just 10 minutes of steeping, and the colors were a bit muted in these eggs.

Surprisingly, the onion skins had the strongest and most immediate impact. This dye yielded a yellow-orange color that looks strikingly similar to the brown eggs that we usually buy.

The blue didn’t seem to be working at all in the early stages, but as the picture at the top shows, the blue eggs did come out beautifully in the morning.

The paprika eggs came out a bit speckled, and it seemed like actual grains of paprika were sticking to the eggs in a splotchy pattern. It gave a nice effect.

My children had a great time with this DIY Easter egg dye experiment, and we look forward to trying new combinations next year.

Try my homemade peanut butter eggs for a healthier Easter treat!

DIY Easter Egg Dye

Learn how to make this DIY Easter egg dye with this easy tutorial.

Print Recipe

Prep Time:10 mins

Cook Time:20 mins

Total Time:30 mins

Ingredients

• 1 beet
• 1 tbs paprika
• 1/4 head red cabbage
• 1/2 cup onion skins
• 5 1/3 tbs vinegar

Instructions

• Pink: Chop one medium beet and boil it in a pan with 4 cups of water. Strain the beet chunks and bring the water to room temperature, then add 2 tablespoons of vinegar.
• Red: Boil a tablespoon of paprika in a cup of water. Bring the water to room temperature and add 2 teaspoons of vinegar.
• Blue: Chop ¼ head of red cabbage and boil it in 4 cups of water. Strain the cabbage and bring the water to room temperature, then add 2 tablespoons of vinegar.
• Yellow: Take the skins off 4 onions and simmer them in 2 cups of water for 20 minutes. Strain the onion skins and bring the water to room temperature, then add 2 teaspoons of vinegar.
• Transfer each dye mixture to a separate jar. Soak hard boiled eggs overnight in each jar for the most vibrant color.
• Store the eggs in the refrigerator until ready to peel and eat.

Notes

Dye recipes were inspired by this Better Homes and Gardens article.

Nutrition

Calories: 11kcal

Servings: 12

Calories: 11kcal

Author: Annemarie Rossi