I’ve been wanting to try natural dye since this summer so I finally decided to give it a try when I saw other bloggers using natural dye to dye eggs. It’s always so fascinating to see what colors come from different fruits and vegetables. I really wanted to try using some berries as I thought they would give the most vibrant colors but since berries are out of season they are super expensive. If you are like me though you go through smoothie phases. Sometime they are all you eat and then next thing you know you end up with a five pound bag of fruit getting freezer burnt because it’s winter and who wants a smoothie in the winter? So I raided my freezer burnt smoothie stash and used those berries to make the dye.
Before I got started I had done no research so I was really making this up as I went. This proved to me that you can’t really mess this up, because spoiler alert this project was a big success in my opinion.
Extracting Juices
To make your natural dye you are going to need any fruit or vegetable you might have lying around. Like I said I pulled out frozen fruit from my freezer and used that so it doesn’t even need to be fresh! I tried to use spinach, but I was having very little success with that. In the end I used blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries. Start by putting your fruit into a pot and turning it on a medium heat. I added about two tablespoons (ish) of water to the bottom of the pot. Now you cook the crap out of it. After several minutes the berries will start to break down and their juices will come out. I used a fork to squeeze out any excess juice when the fruit was extra mushy. It really depends on how long you need to keep the fruit on the stove top. The amount of fruit you are using will determine that.
Making the Dye
Once you take the fruit off the stove, strain out any left over chunky bits. If there are a few left in there it’s a-okay. I don’t actually own a lot of kitchen gadgets so I just used a fork to hold back the chunks as I slowly poured the concentrate into a bowl.
Now that the concentrate is separated add in about a quarter cup of vinegar. Finally add some warm water. How much you ask? Well it really depends on how much concentrated juice you were able to extract from the fruit. You want about one part water to two parts concentrate. The more concentrated the dye mixture the more vibrant the color will turn out. With that knowledge you can really play around and get the colors as vibrant or dull as you want.
How to Make Hardboiled Eggs
Before the fun part…call your mom and ask her how to make hard boiled eggs. If you don’t want to do that I called mine and here is what she told me. Put the eggs in a pot of water, put them on the stove and bring them to a boil. Once they are boiling, leave them in the pot to boil for ten minutes. Once ten minutes is up strain them and put them in a bath of ice water for easy peeling later ( or don’t because like me you never have ice in the house, and just use cold water instead). If I can make hard boiled eggs, trust me when I say you can too…there is a reason I don’t have a cooking blog!
Dying with Natural Dye
From here it is basically just like your traditional egg dying experience. Get creative as you can! I wrapped some rubber bands around mine to give them a tie dyed look. Somethings that I came across when using the natural dye versus using the dye you buy from the store. My eggs had to sit in the dye significantly longer, so if at first it seems like the dye isn’t taking just walk away for a few minutes. Second little bubbles kept forming on my eggs, I’m not sure why. I tried rinsing them off but then that was washing off all of the dye, so i just left them.
Honestly I was kind of underwhelmed with my results at first. The natural dye wasn’t looking as cool as I thought it would. I put my eggs in a bowl in the refrigerator and was ready to call it a failed experiment, definitely not something to write about. I didn’t even dye my remaining six eggs. When I looked at them the next morning boy was I surprised. Some how the colors looked more vibrant and I loved the results. Natural dye is definitely a technique that lends itself to a lot of experimenting. After this experience I’m looking forward to trying more natural dying knowing what I know now. So that’s it! I encourage you to give it a try, making natural dye was super fun.
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