This Easter will be the very first at 1840 Farm to include eggs from our own hens. Somehow, coloring these eggs seems a little extra special and worthy of a celebration. This year, a grocery store egg dyeing kit just won’t do.
Luckily, we’ve been making our own egg dye for a few years. It is an easy process that yields incredibly colorful eggs. I wish that I could say that I started making our own dye solution because I was feeling creative. Instead, imagine a grocery store trip where the egg coloring kit we paid for didn’t end up in our grocery bag. An hour later, my children stood at the kitchen counter ready to dye their eggs. There was only one problem. Our package of egg dye was back at the grocery store.
Enter the Internet and a virtual encyclopedia of sites with step-by-step instructions regarding decorating eggs. We’ve adjusted our original technique to suit our needs and have a process that works every time. Now we leave the packages of egg dye at the grocery store on purpose.
Before we color our eggs, they have to be cooked. This is the tricky part. Cook them too long and the taste and appearance suffers. Cook them too little and no one ends up with egg salad for lunch. An overcooked or undercooked egg can be terribly disappointing under any circumstance, but even more so when you’ve tended to chickens all winter and are just enjoying your first few months of fresh eggs straight from your own coop.
Before starting the process of cooking the eggs, they should be allowed to warm up to room temperature. Eggs in a room temperature shell are less likely to crack when the cooking water finally comes to a boil. I try to allow the eggs to sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes. In a pinch, I run them under lukewarm tap water to bring them to room temperature a little more quickly.
Also, a word about fresh eggs: They can be incredibly frustrating to peel after they have been boiled. They are simply so fresh that the shells don’t want to give up their place in the complex system that is an egg. I have found that I have better luck by using the eggs that were gathered a few days earlier. Eggs that are a couple days old seem to produce a hard-boiled egg that is a little easier to peel.
The first step in boiling the eggs is to carefully select the proper pot for the job. The pot you choose should hold all of the eggs in a single layer and have a tight-fitting lid. Boiling the eggs in a single layer will help to produce evenly cooked eggs.
Once you have selected the right pot, carefully place your single layer of eggs in the bottom and add enough cold water to cover them by one inch. Try to resist the impulse to overfill the pot. Adding too much water will require a longer cooking time to bring the water to a boil, which may result in overcooked eggs.
Bring the water and eggs to a rapid boil over high heat. As soon as the water is boiling rapidly, remove the pot from the heat and cover with the lid. Allow the eggs to rest in the hot water for 17 minutes if using large or extra large eggs. Jumbo eggs may require an additional three or four minutes of cooking time.
Meanwhile, fill a large bowl with ice water. As soon as the cooking time has elapsed, gently transfer the cooked eggs to the ice water. Allow the eggs to rest for 10 minutes to completely stop the cooking process. After 10 minutes, remove the eggs from the ice bath and allow them to dry on a clean towel. At this point, the eggs can be refrigerated overnight until you are ready to decorate them.
Now the fun really begins. It’s finally time to color the eggs. I like to use coffee cups for dying our eggs. I don’t have a scientific reason to do so, it just reminds me of egg decorating when I was a child. In each coffee cup, I mix four to six ounces of warm water with one tablespoon of vinegar and enough liquid or paste food coloring to achieve the desired color. Make sure that you are using a cup or bowl that can hold your colored liquid along with an egg. A container that is too small will overflow when you add your egg and leave you with a very colorful mess to clean up.
Gently place eggs into the dye mixture and allow to rest until they are colored to your liking. We typically set the kitchen timer for 10-minute increments. As the timer sounds, the kids come running back to the kitchen to check on the progress. They declare which eggs are done and which need another 10 minutes in their color bath. After the coloring is finished, transfer the eggs to a paper towel and allow them to dry completely. The dry eggs can be stored in an egg carton in the refrigerator for three days or until you are ready to use them.
As I mentioned, this is our first year with fresh eggs or, as my son likes to call them, “homemade eggs.” In years past, I purchased white eggs for egg dyeing. We have Plymouth Barred Rocks, Silver Laced Wyandottes, Golden Laced Wyandottes and an Australorp. They all lay brown eggs, so we questioned what our dyed eggs might end up looking like. In fact, we wondered if we might be forced to buy white eggs at the store in order to have beautifully colored eggs to celebrate with. We crossed our fingers and hoped that it wouldn’t come to such drastic measures.
After the first 10 minutes in the dye, we got our answer. The colors were incredible. Instead of the standard pale lavender, pink and peach, our brown eggs had been transformed into deeply saturated eggplant, fuchsia and copper. The colors amazed us. They were definitely worthy of our first year’s celebration of dyeing our very own homemade eggs. Hopefully, it will be the first of many colorful celebrations to come.
17 Comments
A comment about coloring: I used supermrket food dye, the liquid type in small bottels. 2/3rds cup of water in a ceramic coffee cup, heated to near boiling in microwave (1 minute), then added 1 Tablespoon of white vinegar; then added 5 or six (up to perhaps 15-20) drops ov coloring. Found that 10 minutes usually gave the best results, but check at 5 min to check on color. The pure color green, red and blue came out wonderful. When the cup water cools the amount of color on the shell diminishes, so after say two or three eggs put the cup (& liquid) back into the microwave to re-invigorate!
I never have trouble peeling my fresh eggs UNLESS they have been refrigerated! I boil a dozen almost everyday and they are fresh from the nest. I can’t wait to color some now and also crack/roll some to color and make deviled eggs with a psychedelic pattern! Can also use koolaid 🙂
Thanks for another great tip. I spent the morning at our local Farmer’s Market and came home with a dozen Araucana eggs. I’ll be coloring some and sharing what I find out.
I have seen and tried two tips for peeling hard boiled eggs. A garden show suggested putting salt (Tablespoon fulls) in the boiling water for easier peeling. This worked, but wasted a lot of salt I thought. My sister in law from the Philipines leaves her eggs in the water. The water permeates the shell and separates the shell from the egg beautifully. I let the eggs sit in the water 10 minutes before boiling and then let them set in the cooling water for about 30 minutes. I don’t know if she meant soak before or after so I do both and have had beautiful results even with eggs laid the same day.
I can’t wait to try out the steaming technique. I’ll share what I find out.
I tried to purchase some blue/green eggs today at a local farm, but they only had brown eggs. I’d love to see what kind of colors the blue/green eggs yield, so I’m hoping that someone will share a photo on the Community Chickens FaceBook page.
Happy Easter and Happy Egg Coloring!
I loved reading this post, even though I already have experience dying brown eggs. It’s true that the colors come out beautifully! I am so glad I read through the comments too, because I had given up the idea of hard boiling our hens’ eggs ever again. They are SO frustrating to try to peel! Now I will have to investigate a) letting them sit for a week and b) steaming them. Thanks everybody for all the great wisdom :).
Wow-I’m thrilled that so many of you enjoyed the post and shared your own tips and tricks. I plan on giving them all a try. To answer your questions:
I have not personally colored eggs from an Easter Egger or Araucana hen. However, I plan on visiting a local farm tomorrow to pick up my weekly supply of raw milk and I think that they have Araucanas. If so, I’ll pick up a dozen eggs and let you know how my technique works on their eggs.
I do not use a dye kit. I use regular food coloring to color our eggs. Another side benefit is that we can color eggs any time we want to. We don’t have to rely on the availability of the Easter egg kits at the store. I have used both liquid food coloring and paste food coloring and find that they both work well.
Keep the questions and comments coming-I absolutely love reading them! Happy Easter to you all. I hope that you will share photos of your beautiful eggs on the Community Chickens FaceBook page. I can’t wait to see them!
I have found that steaming my fresh eggs works really well. I put them in a steaming basket over boiling water and cover. I steam them for 20 minutes then plunge them into ice water and allow them to cool all the way. Then I crack them lightly with the back of a spoon, insert the spoon carefully under the cracked shell and gently lift off the shell. They turn out beautifully ALMOST every time!
Do you use dye from the egg dye kits or just regular food coloring?
If only I had more than one hen laying! ;-0
what about blue/green eggs from EE’s or aracuanas sp?
Eggs that are newer than a week (or so) old don’t give up their shells easily, so if you’re planning to hard boil eggs, let them sit in your fridge for at least a week and they’ll be easier to peel. (They’re still plenty fresh, so don’t worry about that aspect.)
I don’t let mine sit 17 minutes — I bring mine to a boil, then take them off the heat and let them sit, covered, for 9 minutes. Then I drain them and let them continue to slowly cool to room temperature.
Last year was our first year dyeing “homemade eggs.” We were amazed at how beautiful the brown eggs turned out. We have some leghorns, a silver laced wyandotte, barred rocks and a partride cochin so we were able to compare white to brown eggs and amazingly we all preferred the brown. Their colors are so deep and true. Happy Easter!
Gorgeous colors! When hard-cooking fresh eggs, even your boiling method won’t allow for easy peeling. Instead, steam the eggs. Ever see those funky vintage egg cookers at flea markets? They were steamers! I’ve more about the science of steaming eggs on my blog post. http://www.hencam.com/henblog/2011/03/steamed-eggs/
What a great post! The colors turned out so bright-great photos! I can’t wait to dye my first farm-fresh eggs this year. Thanks for the inspiration!
Ahhhhh – this article made my day! You’ll find out why tomorrow morning. Thanks, Jennifer!
We’re looking forward to coloring eggs this week and using your directions. Thank you for the awesome directions!