Toxin-Free Easter Eggs

Do you love decorating for Easter or hosting Easter egg hunts for kids, yet don’t like the idea of toxic and artificial dyes? Follow these instructions to make chemical-free, non-toxic Easter eggs! Learn how to make yellow, blue, purple, pink, and dark purple dye for easter eggs with all natural, organic ingredients that you have in your kitchen.

The instructions below include tips for making hard boiled dyed eggs or empty dyed egg shells.

Natural dyes for Easter eggs

There are so many natural ingredients you can use to make Easter eggs without having to use artificial dyes! In this tutorial, you will learn how to make pink Easter eggs using beets, yellow Easter eggs using turmeric, green Easter eggs using spinach, blue easter eggs using purple cabbage, and dark purple Easter eggs using blueberries.

The only other ingredients for non-toxic Easter eggs are water and vinegar. You can use regular white vinegar for this activity.

Should you empty Easter eggs to make them hollow or hard boil eggs?

This is completely up to you and depends on what you plan on doing with the eggs.

If you are making Easter eggs for decoration and want them to stay out at room temperature for several days or weeks, you should empty the egg shells and wash them out completely so that they don’t have any egg residue inside.

The downside to emptied egg shells is that they are fragile and would not withstand an Easter egg hunt.

If you want to make homemade Easter eggs for an egg hunt for kids, I recommend hard boiling the eggs so that they do not make a mess if they are dropped or cracked.

How to clean out egg shells

Start by washing the outside of the egg well with dish soap. To clean out egg shells, you will need a large needle. Simply pierce the egg with a needle on both sides, and use the needle to poke around inside the egg to “scramble” the egg white and yolk inside. Use your mouth to blow into one of the egg holes to push out the scrambled egg.

If you are on a Paleo diet and can tolerate eggs, you can collect the scrambled eggs into a bowl and use them for cooking. Another option is to offer them to a friend or neighbor to use.

Once the egg shell is emptied, wash it gently with soapy water, rinse off, and let it dry completely before dying.

Hard boiled dyed eggs

If you decide to hard boil the eggs, you can do that right in the prepared dye that you make to save time! There’s no need to hard boil the eggs beforehand. Hard boiled eggs will need to be refrigerated until ready to use, but you can prepare them up to a week in advance.

Natural blue dye for eggs

Natural blue dye for Easter eggs comes from purple cabbage. Slice 1 cup of purple cabbage and simmer it in 2 cups of water until the water turns blue.

If using hollow egg shells, soak it in the dye for at least 30 minutes, or up to 24 hours. If hard boiling the eggs, just add them to the cabbage and water and hard boil for at least 10 minutes

Allow the eggs to dry and cool completely before using. Discard the cooked cabbage because it will be overcooked and flavorless—not great for eating.

For a fun experiment, try adding a tablespoon of vinegar to the blue cabbage water and it will turn a light purple color.

Natural pink dye for eggs

Beets are used to dye eggs pink naturally. Peel a beet and chop it into 4-6 pieces. Simmer the beets in 2 cups of water. If you want, you can cook the beets until they are fork-tender, remove them before adding eggs, and add them to a salad or enjoy them on their own as a side dish, with a touch of sea salt and pepper.

After removing the beets, add 1 tablespoon of vinegar and the eggs or egg shells to the pink water. Again, you can hard boil the eggs in the pink liquid for about 10 minutes, or simply let the emptied egg shells sit in the dye.

Natural green dye for eggs

Spinach makes a great natural dye for eggs. I used 4 cups of fresh spinach and 2 cups of water and simmered them for 5 minutes. Then I transferred everything to a blender and blended together to make a green liquid. You can pour the green liquid through a fine mesh sieve or a cheesecloth to strain out any spinach bits remaining, then transfer the liquid back into the saucepan to hard boil the eggs, or to soak empty egg shells.

Yellow turmeric dye for eggs

Ground turmeric has been used for dying clothes for centuries, so it is a great natural dye for Easter eggs. Just a tablespoon of ground turmeric is enough to make a rich yellow dye. I combine the turmeric with 2 cups of water and 1 tablespoon of vinegar and let it simmer to make a yellow dye.

Purple dye for eggs

I used blueberries to make a dark purple dye for eggs. I simply blended fresh blueberries with water and strained them through a fine mesh sieve to get purple blueberry juice. Some of the blueberry pulp ended up in the juice, but that is OK. I transferred the blueberry juice to a saucepan and simmered it until it got even darker.

I hope you get to make these toxin-free Easter eggs and have a great Easter! Here are a few favorite recipes that would be great for an Easter celebration: