Soft Blue Eggs using Purple Cabbage as Dye
Although onion skins are the traditional Armenian easter egg dye, I do like discovering natural dyes of other colors. I’ve achieved this pretty mottled soft blue using purple cabbage. The way to wrap to get the leaf patterns is in my Onion Skin blog post.
It’s pretty simple but takes time.
Items Needed:
- Eggs
- 1 large head of purple cabbage
- White vinegar
How to: Chop up your cabbage and place it in a large pot. The mottled appearance of the eggs is achieved because of crowding in the pot. So if you want a more solid egg color, use a very large pot with less eggs. I personally like the mottled look.
Add your eggs into the pot and cover with water.
Turn flame to medium heat and bring your eggs to a boil. You’re going to boil the eggs and cabbage for a long while…about a half an hour, so turn the flame to low. Make sure all your eggs are submerged.
Once the flame is low, then add about 1/2 cup of white vinegar. You’ll see the color change. At this point, the color of the water will be so pretty, you’ll be all excited to see your eggs….and then you’ll put up an egg with a spoon and be super disappointed because the color will not have absorbed yet. It’s okay. It takes time.
In the photo on the left, you’ll see that the cabbage leaves have lost almost all their color, which has now gone into the water. After simmering for about a half an hour, just turn off the heat and let it sit there. You can cover your pot and just leave it. Go about your day. The water will cool…the eggs will be fine. Give it several hours. The longer you leave it, the deeper the blue.
I put my eggs on the stove at night. By 11 p.m. I turned off the flame and left them overnight. And I had blue eggs in the morning.
That’s all there is to it. One thing to note: because there’s vinegar in the dye and the eggs are submerged for a long time, this softens the surface a bit.
Once you pull your eggs out of the water, give them a rinse in cool water and then just let them air dry, either on paper towels or kind of suspended horizontally over your egg carton. If you try to dry them, you’ll rub off some of the dye. (live and learn).
Have fun…and Happy Easter.
