Cooking with Kids: Cooking and Coloring Eggs for Easter

Cooking and Coloring Eggs

Difficulty Level: Easy

Place the eggs in cold water, bring to a boil, cover the pot tightly and let set off the stove for 15 minutes. Put them in very cold water when done (a bowl with lots of ice and water is great!) and let set until cool. Now you're ready to color the eggs!

Coloring Eggs The Natural Way

You can always buy dye tablets at the market around Easter time to color the eggs. You can also submerge the eggs in water, food coloring, and a little vinegar. But sometimes it's "neat" to do some experimenting...like with onion skins!

Onion skins make beautiful eggs—not evenly colored, but mottled like marble, and each egg comes out differently. Lay out a six or seven-inch square of cheesecloth and put some onion skins on it. Place the egg in the middle of the skins and pull up the corners of the cheesecloth. Fasten the cloth together with a rubber band, drop the eggs into boiling water. Boil for twelve minutes.

Run cold water into the pot to cool the eggs. Take off the cloth, and there you are!

The eggs will be mostly an amber-tan color, but some will have red, yellow, or green streaks. It really doesn't matter whether you use red or yellow onion skins; ask your grocer to save loose onion skins for your project.