Colouring Easter eggs
Forget about chemical dyes that make the Easter eggs look gaudy. Let’s colour the eggs with onion skins – this organic way will give the eggs rich brown and red colour. You can brighten up this colour with the help of rice grains or little leaves. Easy handicraft, organic way and making your own magic in the kitchen – that’s the way to go.
Despite the availability of a wide range of various dyes in Russia, colouring Easter still holds a strong position as a centuries-long tradition. You will need several handfuls of onion skins. The best way to ensure this quantity is starting to collect these skins in advance, treating them like golden treasure.
Then there’s a tip from a different cuisine – you can make a base gravy for an Indian curry, as it takes a lot of onions. A nd the last but not least approach – you can venture to the market and ask the greengrocer for some onion skins, this is if you are determined and tolerant to all sorts of surprise on the other end.
Now, having a necessary amount of onion skins the rest is easy.
What you will need:
- A small bag full of onion skins
- Water
- Salt
- Eggs
- Vegetable oil
- Paper towel
For decoration:
- Some rice/tiny leaves (for example,parsley)
- Bandage
- Threads
- How to:
-
- Bring together water, leaves and salt into a pot, boil for 40 minutes and leave for several hours to infuse. (Salt will prevent the egg shelves from cracking.) Bring the pot to boil again, leaving the skins in.
- Wash the eggs and boil in the pot with onion skins for 15 minutes. Take out, dry and rub in some oil with the help of a paper towel
For patterns
- Roll a wet eggs in a bowl with rice/ Stick a tiny leaf, for instance a parsley leaf, to a wet egg. Wrap with a bandage and secure with a thread. Boil together with other eggs, take off the wrapping and oil for the shine.
- Boil onion skins (40 min) and infuse over a few hours
- Other ingredients.
- Pattern1: roll a wet egg in rice grains
- Pattern2: stick tiny leaves to a wet egg
- Wrap with a bandadge and secure with a thread
- Boil for 15 min and cool down
- Rub in some oil with a paper towel. Enjoy!
