Can You Dye Brown Eggs?
Our family got our first chickens in September 2019. Like many others we stopped at our local Tractor Supply to pick up 6 chickens, only to end up with 15. By Spring 2020, our new chickens were laying and we were no longer buying eggs from the store. When seeking out chickens that would lay fun colors, I never really thought about whether or not we could dye the eggs, until Easter hit that first spring.
Talk about an inner conflict!
Our chicken investment was only yielding brown, green and blue eggs and I’ve always used white eggs for dying. Do I go against my conscience and buy white eggs simply because that’s what I’ve always done? OR do we take the already colorful eggs and do a little experiment?
We love experiments, and we’re pretty stubborn about NOT buying eggs from the store when we are raising chickens at home. So we tried it.
For our experiement we used the tried and true Paas egg dye kit. To see how much color could develop, we left our eggs in the dye between 15 and 30 minutes. I think 15-20 minutes was our “sweet spot”.
The result end was a beautiful array of deep, jewel tones of blues, reds, purples, greens and oranges. Aren’t they beautiful? And the kids loved seeing the rich bold colors as the eggs were lifted out of the cups.
Our kids even used the enlosed crayon to make letters and hearts on the eggs. They turned out really cute and kept the kids busy while the first round of eggs sat in the dye cups for the extended time. From now on, I will always have a crayon on hand for this very reason.
If you are looking at your fresh eggs and wondering if the non-white eggs will still work for Easter egg dying, rest assured - they will! You do not need to make that extra trip for white eggs just because you’ve always used them at Easter. Our colorful eggs will stand beautifully on their own this time of year or will gladly take part in your easter egg dying tradition. And the results are absolutely stunning.
Here are a few tips that will help your eggs turn out perfectly:
ALWAYS steam or instapot your fresh eggs. - fresh eggs can be tricky to hard boil becuase they are A LOT fresher than what you find in stores. We have the best success with using an instapot and the 5-5-5-rule (I will sometimes do a 3-5-5 for small and medium eggs).
COOL your eggs completely in the fridge for at least 1 hour after hard boiling them and sitting in the icebath for 5 minutes.
Your eggs will need to stay in the dye a little longer than white eggs to fully develop that jewel tone color. This could be anywhere from 10-30 minutes depending on your personal taste.
The eggs are still 100% edible. Store in the fridge overnight for a quick breakfast the next morning. Our kids loved picking out which color egg they wanted to eat the next morning. If you like having eggs on display, make two batches - one for fun breakfast eating and one for display or egg hunts. Your eggs should stay good for about a week after dying them.
Crayons before dying or glitter and stickers after can add a little extra flare to these beauties AND give your little ones something to do while their other eggs are soaking in the dye.
If you decide to try dying the fresh eggs from Chesapeake Homestead, we’d love to see the result! Comment or post on our facebook page to let us know how it turns out for you!