5 Colorful Veggies You Can Use To Dye Your Easter Eggs

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With dying eggs being an annual tradition, Easter has always been the one day of the year that you could play with your food. But while generic, store-bought liquid, gel, or liqua-gel food colorings are the usual egg dyeing agents of choice, you can also use your Easter egg-dyeing activity as a way to avoid food waste. There are many different fruits and vegetables you can use to dye your Easter eggs this spring and make full use of what you have sitting in the fridge. 

From turmeric for yellow eggs to beets for pink ones, and from cabbage for purplish-blue eggs to spirulina for green — you can achieve any shade of pastel you like, and none of the veggies in your kitchen have to go to waste. Apart from saving yourself from throwing some perfectly good vegetables down the trash shoot, using your produce and plants to make natural dye for your Easter eggs can have some health benefits, as well. 

There are things you should know about artificial food coloring, and they could just make you swear by these produce-based, all-natural Easter egg dyes for good. Just keep in mind that the actual color of your eggs could alter the results, and to stick with white-shelled eggs for the most true and vibrant colors. You can also double dip your eggs, starting with yellow and then dipping them into something like red or green to create other non-primary colors.

Cooking with turmeric on any regular day can certainly feel like you're taking a risk — especially knowing that, with any wrong flick of a spatula or spoon, you could have a major stain on your hands. But, when dyeing Easter eggs, that's exactly what it comes in handy for. Whether it's fresh or dried turmeric, you can use the colorful vegetable to dye your Easter eggs anywhere from a deep shade of gold to a light, pastel shade of yellow. If you have a bottle of dry turmeric powder sitting in your spice rack that's just been waiting for you to use it, making a yellow Easter egg dye can be as easy as boiling it in water over the stove. You can also buy ground turmeric, like this one by Happy Belly, on Amazon.

Using ¼ of a cup for every 2 cups of water, you can boil this mixture for anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes (the longer the deeper the color). When it's finished, allow the mixture to cool completely before you strain it and add a tablespoon of white vinegar to help the color adhere to the eggs. For fresh turmeric, you'll want to start by rinsing the root and grating or slicing it into thin pieces. Then, place 1 to 2 cups of it in 2 cups of boiling water for up to 30 minutes and let the mixture cool. After that, strain the liquid and you'll be ready to start dyeing some Easter eggs. This is just one of many great uses for fresh turmeric.

You're not dying Easter eggs if there's not a pink dye on the table — or really any other color of the rainbow, for that matter. But if pink is what you're specifically after, you can look to beets to make your dye. Similar to the turmeric mentioned above, most beet recipes are tricky and messy to cook on any other day, but on Easter, they're perfect. Beets contain a group of red and yellow pigments called betalains that can alter the colors of your clothes, skin, and, yes, your urine, which can be used to your advantage this Easter.

To make your very own all-natural pink shade of dye from scratch for your eggs, take about 2 cups of beets and give them a simple rinse before slicing or shredding and boiling them in water for 30 minutes. In this case, however, you can also save yourself from any other potentially unwanted or accidental stains and use the juice of the beets instead. After purchasing canned beets or straight juice from the store, simply boil 1 to 2 cups of beet juice with 2 cups of water, allow it to cool, and add 2 tablespoons of white vinegar before using the mixture to dye your Easter eggs this spring holiday.

There's room for every color of the rainbow on your Easter eggs, and blue especially. From the blue skies you wait all year for to the fresh sprung blue tulips that are so cognizant of the season, blue is one color you do not want to skip when you're preparing your Easter egg dyes this year. If you're doing it from scratch at home, however, you'll want to reach for one vegetable in particular to do so: purple cabbage. Among the many cabbage varieties you should keep in your fridge, you can use purple cabbage (also called red cabbage) to make an all-natural dye that ensures they don't go to waste. 

The approach is just the same as mentioned with the previous produce-based dyes. Simply give the cabbage a rinse under water, slice up a couple cups of it, and boil it with 2 cups of water for up to half an hour. Once it's cool, strain the mixture and add a tablespoon of white vinegar. The general rule when it comes to the ratio between your produce and water is to aim for 1 to 2 cups of plant material for every 2 cups of water you use. This will ensure your dye comes out nice and vivid, but steeping it longer and dipping your eggs into it more times can help with vibrancy, too.

While it might not be something you regularly have on hand, spirulina is one thing you really should be eating more of. Sold in fresh, frozen, and powdered forms, spirulina is an algae that grows underwater — and it's the single most nutrient-dense food on the planet, on land or off. Spirulina is also known for its vibrant green color, giving you the ability to transform anything from your pasta sauce to your smoothies into a super-green meal. The same thing goes for your Easter eggs. There really aren't many plants, fruits, or vegetables that you can use to produce green dye, specifically — and that makes spirulina particularly unique. 

But making an Easter egg dye from spirulina is no different than making a dye with any other land-grown fruit or vegetable. Simply add a tablespoon of dried spirulina (like this one by Kate Naturals on Amazon) to boiling water and let the mixture go for up to 30 minutes. When a sufficient amount of time passes, allow it to cool down to room temperature before straining and adding a tablespoon or 2 of white vinegar to it. With your spirulina-based Easter egg dye, all of your eggs can get a bit of a green makeover — both literally and figuratively. Natural dyes are better for the environment, after all, and isn't the spring season all about celebrating that?

Last but not least, for red-colored Easter eggs, look no further than your red onions. While these root vegetables get more than enough use in your kitchen outside of your arts and crafts, what's unique about making a dye with your red onions is that you actually only need the skins. Knowing that, you can dice up raw red onion for your tacos, slice and caramelize them for your burgers, or pickle them whole and save the onion peels that you don't use to make an all-natural Easter egg dye. The other option would then, of course, be to peel them first and stow the unused onions in your fridge until you do have a reason to use them.

To make a dye from your onion skins, do exactly as you would with any of the other vegetables listed above. Start by chopping up about 1 to 2 cups of skins and then placing them in boiling water until the color is extracted — or about 30 minutes. From there, let the water cool and remove the onion skins from the liquid before adding the aforementioned 1 to 2 tablespoons of white distilled vinegar. This will help the dye adhere to the shell of your Easter eggs, which, added to a bowl or a wide-mouthed jar, should only take about 30 minutes of soaking for a pastel shade. Of course, you can soak your eggs for as long as you like, creating a deeper color the longer you do.