Making natural Easter egg dye is easy, natural, fun, and reuses old food scraps. These easy DIY naturally dyed Easter eggs are the perfect staple for the Easter season. Learn how to make natural Easter egg dye with this easy tutorial.
Making natural Easter egg dye is easy, natural, fun, and reuses old food scraps. These easy DIY naturally dyed Easter eggs are the perfect staple for the Easter season. Learn how to make natural Easter egg dye with this easy tutorial.
Spring at the Homestead
It’s spring at the homestead. Birds are finally chirping, grass is finally growing, and we’ve planted a few seeds inside.
Today I made banana pancakes for breakfast, homemade sourdough bagels for lunch, and we’re grilling hamburgers for dinner. Man, as soon as that sun comes out, we go straight into summer recipes 😉
In between meal prep we’ve been enjoying hanging out outside, in the sun, with the chickens and cats. I gave our living room hutch a few spring touches, and shared a peaceful spring day VLOG over on my youtube channel.
The other day I thought it would be the perfect time to dye some hard boiled eggs. Straying away from store-bought egg dye, I decided to make our own. These naturally dyed Easter eggs turned out surprisingly well, and my daughter had fun helping me too.
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Why I Love This Recipe
If you’ve been around this blog before, you know I love all things homemade and natural.
The other day I was reading an Easter book with my daughter and the characters in the book did naturally dyed Easter eggs. I thought it was so fun and had to try it ourselves! This makes a great toddler or kid activity and also encourages eating eggs, which I enjoy. So, thank you to that book for inspiring this blog post!
Of course, I love that this is natural. When I used to buy Easter egg dye from the store, it would always end up getting onto my hard boiled egg. I always wondered if that’s bad or not. In general, I like to make everything from scratch when it is easy and enjoyable. For me, this checks both those boxes!
Reusing old food. I love to reuse old food and not let things go to waste. Sometimes I put my onion scraps in homemade bone broth or throw them in the chicken run.
We try to never let blueberries go bad, but the truth is when you buy them in the winter, they’re just not as good since they’re not in season. I just bought blueberries this week and they only lasted 3 days because they were already going bad at the store. So this was a great use for them!
Most surprisingly, my favorite part about this recipe is the fact that once you make the dye, you can reuse it all month long. Just store it in wide mouth mason jars in the fridge and it’ll preserve (because of the vinegar). Just shake or stir it and drop new eggs in, every week until Easter!
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Equipment Needed
3 Medium/Large Stovetop Pots
Wide Mouth Mason Jars (or similar jar for storing the dye)
Cutting Board
Knife
Tablespoon
Natural Easter Egg Dye Ingredients
3-4 whole beets
2 Yellow onions
2 tbsp turmeric
1 pint old or mushy blueberries. I like to accumulate them and store in the freezer.
White Vinegar
Hard-boiled eggs, brown or white (see tutorial for hard boiled eggs here)
How to Dye Easter eggs with Food
Start by placing 3 medium to large stovetop pots on the stove with water on high heat.
Chop up beets roughly. You do not need to skin them first. Add the beets to the pot.
Then peel the skin off of 2 yellow onions and place the skins in the second pot of water. Add the turmeric and stir to combine. Save the rest of the onion to cook with another time!
Next add the blueberries to the third pot.
Let all 3 pots come to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and let sit 20-30 minutes. If you have the time, you can also turn the heat off and let them sit all day for a richer color.
Natural Easter Egg dye Process, Continued
When you’re done simmering the dyes, remove them from the stove and let them come to room temperature.
Next strain the food out of the liquid. You can eat the boiled beets and turn the blueberries into a jam. Or give them to farm animals so nothing goes to waste!
Then, pour the dye into several different wide mouth mason jars. Add 1-2 tbsp of white vinegar to each jar and stir.
Then, add your hard boiled eggs! For a quick hard boiled egg tutorial, simply boil a pot of water and add eggs. Boil for 12 minutes, remove the eggs, and let them sit in the fridge for 1-2 hours before dyeing or peeling.
Leave the eggs in the dye for 30 minutes to 1 hour.
Remove and enjoy! Store in the fridge for 3-5 days. Have a wonderful Easter 🙂
More Substitutes for Natural Easter egg Dye
I found this graphic from The Kitchn and it shows more substitutes for natural Easter egg dyes.
More Spring Tutorials You May Enjoy
Simple Farmhouse Easter Tablescape
DIY Spring Fresh Flower Wreath
Sourdough Chocolate Chip Brioche (our favorite for Easter morning!)
Still hungry?
I compiled some from-scratch, family favorite recipes perfect for a spring brunch or Easter morning. Enjoy them sent straight to your inbox, for free, with this downloadable ebook.
Cast Iron Hash Browns
Homemade Ketchup
Veggie & Egg Bake
Homemade Yogurt
Oven-roasted granola
FAQ
What can I use to dye Easter eggs naturally?
Red beets, blueberries, yellow onions, red onions, turmeric, tea, flowers, and cabbage can all be used to dye Easter eggs naturally.
How do you make Easter eggs without dye?
To make Easter eggs without dye, you can either buy them already colored (i.e., from specific hen breeds that produce colored eggs), or you can make a homemade dye with food and water.
This graphic shows really nicely the different colored eggs you can get from different breeds of chickens. I found this on Pinterest but there was no source of where it came from, so thank you to whomever created it!
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Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs
Making natural Easter egg dye is easy, natural, fun, and reuses old food scraps. These easy DIY naturally dyed Easter eggs are the perfect staple for the Easter season. Learn how to make natural Easter egg dye with this easy tutorial.
Ingredients
- 3-4 whole beets
- 2 Yellow onions
- 2 tbsp turmeric
- 1 pint old or mushy blueberries. I like to accumulate them and store in the freezer.
- White Vinegar
- Hard-boiled eggs, brown or white
Instructions
- Start by placing 3 medium to large stovetop pots on the stove with water on high heat.
- Chop up beets roughly. You do not need to skin them first. Add the beets to the pot.
- Then peel the skin off of 2 yellow onions and place the skins in the second pot of water. Add the turmeric and stir to combine. Save the rest of the onion to cook with another time!
- Next add the blueberries to the third pot.
- Let all 3 pots come to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and let sit 20-30 minutes. If you have the time, you can also turn the heat off and let them sit all day for a richer color.
- When you’re done simmering the dyes, remove them from the stove and let them come to room temperature.
- Next strain the food out of the liquid. You can eat the boiled beets and turn the blueberries into a jam. Or give them to farm animals so nothing goes to waste!
- Then, pour the dye into several different wide mouth mason jars. Add 1-2 tbsp of white vinegar to each jar and stir.
- Then, add your hard boiled eggs! For a quick hard boiled egg tutorial, simply boil a pot of water and add eggs. Boil for 12 minutes, remove the eggs, and let them sit in the fridge for 1-2 hours before dyeing or peeling.
- Leave the eggs in the dye for 30 minutes to 1 hour.
- Remove and enjoy! Store in the fridge for 3-5 days. Have a wonderful Easter 🙂
Notes
See blog post for additional naturally dyed easter egg color variations
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