Dyeing Easter eggs: what you need to know about the eggs

The most important things in brief

• The dyeing of eggs at Easter time goes back to a Christian custom from the Middle Ages.
• Back then, the eggs were dyed red to commemorate the blood shed by Jesus on the cross. Other colors were added much later.
• Today we are primarily coloring eggs to make the coming of spring at Easter even more colorful and to make the children happy.
• But what should you pay attention to when dyeing eggs?

Even colored eggs have to taste good. And an egg tastes best about seven to 14 days after it is laid. Incidentally, this also applies to hard-boiled eggs – and the egg for dyeing should always be hard-boiled if you don’t want to blow out the shell. After purchase, look at the best before date and subtract 28 days from this to determine the laying date.

Buy colorful Easter eggs? Do-it-yourself is the motto

Before Easter, you can find pre-colored, hard-boiled eggs in all supermarkets, which are also bought in bulk. However, there are several disadvantages associated with this. On the one hand, one often does not know exactly when the egg was laid and when the ideal time for consumption has come.

Secondly, there is no way of knowing which color was used by the food industry to dye the egg. Chemical additives in the food coloring ensure that the color on the egg looks bright and fresh for a long time - but the additives can penetrate the egg through the shell. It is not uncommon for boiled eggs to have small cracks in the shells. With natural dyes for DIY egg dyeing, unwanted substances do not penetrate the food.

Dye eggs yourself: this is the best way

Keyword cracks in the shell: If you dye eggs yourself, you also have to buy the eggs yourself. And that's good because it lets you pay attention to a few important things. If you want to blow eggs out before dyeing them, use brown eggs, which have a sturdier shell. On the other hand, the coloring is more visible on white eggs, but you should always boil them.

Either way, the larger an egg, the more likely it is to crack during cooking. Because smaller eggs usually come from young chickens, the shells are smoother and more robust. When cooking, this means that the shell does not crack as quickly, and the food coloring used is better accepted.

Each color is different, the cooking time is not

There are colors you put the egg in before or after cooking. In this respect, pay attention to what is recommended on the package insert. However, there is agreement on the time that an egg should boil so that it is perfect, i.e. the yolk is still slightly moist and the albumen is quite firm: it should be nine and a half minutes for size M. Researchers around the world have found this out.

Nine minutes is enough for a size S egg, for a size L it should be ten minutes. Anything more than that will make the egg inedible as proteins containing sulfur break down.