Easter Eggs Dyed With Onion Skins

Boiling eggs that have been wrapped snugly in onion skins, produces beautifully patterned Easter eggs.

I never really cared for the usual colourful Easter eggs most people make. They're too gaudy for my taste. I don't like the mess involved with making them and I don't like using all that food colouring. So, for the past ten years or so, I've been colouring my Easter eggs the way my grandparents used to; using onion skins.

Step 1 Materials Needed

Here is what you need to make these kind of Easter eggs:

- eggs
- onion skins (pieces as large as possible)
- 20 cm (8 inch) squares of cloth
- rubber bands
- a pot of boiling water
- some vegetable oil

I start saving onion skins for a month or two before Easter... I guess that's pretty much all of Lent. If you don't have enough onion skins saved up by Easter, ask your local grocery store if you may get some loose onion skins from them.

Comments

[shortone]

nice 'ible! I actually just posted on my blog about these, using a different method. I was wondering if it would be ok with you if I added a link to this instructable so people could see another variation?
here's the post:
http://forefare.blogspot.com/2010/04/kraszanki-easter-eggs.html
(it's strange...my eggs came out very dark red. I think I just cooked them longer with the onion skins or something. :)

[wrique]

You bet Betsy!  Thanks for linking to this!

[shortone]

you're welcome :)

[pdub77]

I like your technique, shortone, for a different take on this. I also like the marbling you get from wrique's. Combined like Voltron (or Wonder Twins, if that's how you roll. . .) you could have a wicked cool Easter basket!

[www.dyingeastereggs.com]

it is so amazing stuff.. My wife done like that .. http://dyingeastereggs.com

[Matt2 Silver]

this is very inventive and intersting, you're right it does look far more classy than the crayon colors that most of us associate with easter.  thanks for posting, i'm excited to give this one a shot

[hibou]

 these are beautiful.  thanks for sharing :)

[sjrushworth]

My mother taught me how to do this (exactly the same method) when I was a little boy in the 1950s! We have done th eggs this way every year since and taught our kids.  No onion flavour issues. 

[MegaOne302]

(removed by author or community request)

[eggmcmffn]

 haha, what makes a better smell than hard boiled eggs? ONIONS and eggs!! hehe

[chrysa]

my family has been dying eggs in skins all  my life and we have never had any onion flavouring issues.

[chrysa]

when my family dyes with skins, we don't bother with the cloth bundles.  We just toss everything in the pot and cook them till they are the right colour. Granted, the 'toss and boil' method doesn't leave the cool patterns as pictured above.

[mpbubb]

... or a little vinegar will keep the whites from running out.

[fpeelo]

Not sure that vinegar is a good idea here. It does help to contain the white, but I think it also interferes with the onion colouring.

[thepelton]

Actually I believe the vinegar would work as a mordant, and help the color of the egg be more colorfast.

[shetonus]

That's right, the vinegar will help keep the eggs more colorful, even after repeated washings! Sorry, couldn't help myself.  It is true though that vinegar should help the dye from smudging in the wet grass or coming off on the little one's clothing... Probably not as much of a problem with onion skins as it would be with beet or red cabbage dye. 

[misterschnitzy]

we tried the onion, Brilliant! The Bermuda onion wasn't as good and was the beet green was a bust. Also, we used coffee filters instead of the cloth and that worked great.

[beva]

I wrap up flowers against the surface of the egg, and they leave a pattern you can get green eggs using red cabbage as a dye

[thepelton]

Someone a couple of years ago gave me a dozen eggs that were green without having been dyed.  The chickens laid them like that.

[Silver Buttons]

I remember my mother making pickled eggs with beet juice. The whole egg--inside and out--turned a bright pinkish red. I loved those as a kid! There is a recipe here if you're interested:  allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pickled-Red-Beet-Eggs/Detail.aspx 

[thepelton]

Beet Juice was also reccommended for nontoxic coloring of homemade wooden toys in a woodworking magazine I was reading.

[thepelton]

Yellow onions are OK, I suppose, but I was wondering how well those purple onions would work?

[Karletto555]

Great instructable. That's how we do it ->
We wrap the egg into a pantyhose and put a leaf of parsley in direct contact with egg shell. The leaf will make bright decoration on the shell and of course it can be also from other vegatable. You should try it because looks very cool.

 

[zascecs]

In my family, we always made these for easter. Pretty cool. 

[Joey702]

That's actually kind of depressing that the eggs don't retain an onion-y taste... it would be perfect for making omelets! Haha, but I very much want to try this! It looks very classy.

[pablosartor]

hard to make an omelet with a  Hard boiled egg.

[Joey702]

 ... D'OH.

*fail*

[bowmaster]

This is so awesome!!!! I wish I had seen this sooner!

[fpeelo]

My grandmother used to colour eggs this way. Then, when we'd visit for dinner, we'd play "smack-eggs" to get started. Each child would take turns smacking their egg off that of another child. Just hard enough to crack them -- and it's another reason why they have to be hard-boiled! The winner is the one who cracks the most eggs before theirs is cracked. Did I say "child"? My father played too. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye -- when only one egg remained uncracked, the could defeat the champion by rotating his hand so that the champion's egg was hit by his wedding ring rather than his egg! Did it fast so no-one noticed. So everyone's eggs were opened and we could eat them.

[lynnaluna]

This is great. Thanks for sharing!

[cats59]

How Lovely to share this skill I made these every year when I was a child. We would make 40 or 50 and give them away to friends and neighbors. we always used dry ingredients and put vinegar in the boiling water. My Mother is from Estonia and made them when she was a child (1930 or so )

[blinkypoet]

this works on rhea eggs, btw:)

[Toffy]

I so enjoyed this instructable. It is well done and your pics are great. The eggs are beautiful and thanks for this information. I will try this. We eat tons of onions so I am going to start saving.

[catacopia]

Have some scrambled eggs or an omelet. I use a one-hole egg blower, empty the yolk and white directly into my frying pan. Wash out the shell. Then, using the egg blower hold the end you blow into under a slow running faucet to refill the shell. I then seal the hole with a tiny bit of melted wax. This keeps the egg from floating so its easier to dye. I use this technique for all my egg decorating.

[erict]

I made these after making dinner and ran out of onion skins. I tried beet and carrot peels as an alternative. Carrots are definitely not any good, and beets give a little color but not enough to really count. Great instructable it definitely gives me some bragging rights. To any moderators that look at this. why does the comments spell checker not recognize instructable as a word?

[wrique]

I have noticed that spell checker quirk as well. Instructables isn't the only one with that problem though - Gmail's spell check doesn't know "gmail". I'm glad that people are enjoying making their own onion skin dyed eggs!

[Aerospaced]

That is a great instructable! Straight out of Runescape! LOL

[SMoroney]

I think that is a wonderful idea, well done you! Those egss look fantastic and it is so simple that the kids can help. Good one - thanks!

[markocosic]

Wooo - somebody else who does this! :-) Those look gorgeous!

Red onion skins tend to work nicer with the tan eggs. (US eggs are white, British eggs are light brown - don't know why!)

(pic) http://www.cosic.org.uk/misc/PICT0404.JPG

Using tights (stockings, pantyhose?) instead of cloth and the rubber band gets you a more even clamping/pressing against the egg for the leaves - useful if you want to try delicate ones.

As a game to play over easter, rather than cracking them on your forehead, one person holds their egg still and ther other person smashes their egg into it. Winner stays on, loser eats their egg, repeat until only one egg is left standing. Hint - there's an optimum end of the egg to use and that depends on which way up it was when boiled, and there's a trick to pre-squeezing the egg (reduces tension on the inside of the shell on impact) and releasing it as the two eggs strike (reduces tension on the outside as the egg relaxes). Mainly the older you are the better at it you tend to be, but you can pretend that there's a skill to it! ;-)

[wrique]

I really like the egg cracking game you describe! I'm bring this year's batch of onion skin dyed Easter eggs to a potluck dinner tomorrow night and I'm going to get everyone to play it.

As for the natural colour of eggs, there seem to be conflicting theories. One states that hens with white feathers produce white eggs & brown hens produce brown eggs. Another theory states that egg colour corresponds to the colour of the hen's ear lobes; white lobes = white eggs, red lobes = brown eggs (yep, apparently chickens have ear lobes).

Other than the colour of the shell, there doesn't seem to be any difference in the nutrient value of the eggs within. Regional preference probably determines which type is predominant in any given area.

Besides white & brown eggs, there are breeds of chicken that produce blue, green, and even speckled eggs as well.