Coloring Easter Eggs with Onion Skins

When I was growing up behind the Iron Curtain, we did not have egg coloring kits, not to mention that celebrating Easter was frowned upon by the authorities. Nevertheless, people still celebrated it, and most families I knew did color Easter eggs. What did they use? Whatever creative thing they could invent, but the most popular one - and very cheap - was onion skins.

Each time you need to use an onion for cooking, you peel off the dry yellow skin. That's exactly what you need for this type of egg coloring. My grandma would save onion skins through the year specifically for the purpose.

The process is very easy. Take a cooking pot, fill it half full with cold water, and place the onion skins in. Then put the eggs in and boil them, just as you would normally cook hard boiled eggs. When done, the eggs will be nicely colored, and they will not stain your fingers: the color sets in and stays on the egg shell. They will not smell or taste like onion, either, and if an egg cracks and some color gets inside, there is nothing to worry about - it's all natural, no chemicals. You can still eat it.

As to the color, it depends on how many onion skins you use. You can put just a little and have your eggs pale yellow; you can put a lot, and have them orange or dark brown. All kinds of shades in between are possible as well. If you want a variety, use several pots with different amount of onion skin in each.

You can get even more creative and decorate your eggs with additional tricks. One thing we did was taking a plant leaf and tying it to the egg with several loops of thread, before coloring. When the boiling is done, you remove the thread and the leaf - to reveal a white or lighter color spot on the egg in the shape of the leaf. The thread marks will be visible as well, which is fine. You can experiment with the thread, too, winding it around the egg in different ways and directions so that the egg turns out to be with the threaded pattern instead of evenly colored.

This can be a very fun project to do with kids, it is likely to create lifelong memories, and it will certainly make your Easter eggs stand out.