Day 54: The Red Eggs, Τα Κόκκινα Αυγά

There are many families that dye Easter eggs in beautuful, vibrant colours.  The range of colours avaialble through food colouring, through egg dying kits, and through paints is amazing.  But, what happens when you don't want to use one of the kits with chemicals that may be harmful, or you don't want to spend five dollars for food colouring that you will use one time a year.  Or, maybe you are alone and there is no joy in such an elaborate activity?  Well, if you are Greek Orthodox, you already know the answer -- you pick one nice colour and stick to it; and that colour is red.

Why red?  Well, we have paraphrased the explanation taken from  the story according to Phyllis Meshel Onest, a well-known, published Director of the Office of Religious Education in the U.S.  Eggs have a worldwide association with new life.  The Resurrection of Christ brings a new life to all of us who celebrate.  The red colour is to symbolise the blood that Christ shed for us.  Therefore, the first thing we eat to break our fast is a red coloured egg to bring to us our new life along with Christ's new life.  It's the same reference to His shedding blood as we hear each Sunday, just before we take Holy Communion -- when the Priest says, "... this is my blood of the new covenant, that was shed for us and for many for the forgiveness of sins."  (We must note that Holy Communion is actual blood and body of Christ, the red dye on the eggs is merely symbolism.)

Now, back to making eggs.  There are, as we said, several ways to obtain the deep red colour that we (Greek Orthodox) use for our eggs at Pascha.  Today, we are going to try two ways to see if either is more effective, or if they are just different.  The first way is the one we all know and find so easy.  It is through the use of the packets of red dye that you can find at the supermarket.  Our local Greek/Italian market carries these different brands, and has a variety of colours available.  We are traditionalists and just make red eggs.  

The other way to dye your eggs red is by using onion skins.  We have read in books, we have heard people discuss, and we have seen on-line that using onion skins is an easy, natural way to colour eggs.  Having never tried this before, we thought this would be a good opportunity to.  We have skins from yellow onions as well as red onions, just to see if there is a difference.  We are following the directions from About.com because they were clear and easy to understand (and we have all the ingredients!).  

Here we go.

For the packets, follow the directions.  First of all, according to the NIKH brand egg dye's instructions, there is enough in the packet to colour 30 eggs.  We aren't using 30 eggs, just one dozen.  Therefore, we expect a much deeper, darker red colour.  

  The directions tell us to boil the eggs.  We do this by using room temperature eggs, to start.  Every time we use eggs, they are room temperature.  Place them in a pot.  You want to put the eggs in before putting the water, that way, the eggs don't bounce on the bottom of the pot and break before boiling.  

So, put the eggs in the pot, and then, fill it with water.  This should be enough water to cover all the eggs completely.  We add salt to the pot before putting it on the stove.  Why?  Well, the salt does a couple of things -- first, the salt will help to make the eggs super easy to peel (we believe).  Secondly, it makes for a more firm egg when cooked.  We want firm boiled eggs, so we add salt.

While the eggs are boiling, mix the packet of dye with some vinegar and water.  It should be enough water to cover the cooked eggs, and about 2 teaspoons of vinegar per cup of water.  We have found over the years that the more vinegar you add, the deeper the colour you get.  So, we are sticking to the ration of 2 teaspoons vinegar per cup of water.  

Mix the water, vinegar, and dye very well.  Then, put the cooled, boiled eggs in the dye.  Let that stand for 5 minutes -- but NOT more!  (as per the directions).  Remove the eggs from the dye using a slotted spoon, a pair of tongs, or a strainer.  

Place the coloured eggs on a cooling rack that is on top of some newspaper or paper towels.  By putting them on a cooling rack to drip dry, it is less likely that you will get that one white spot where the egg rested on a plate or a towel.  

Lyra brand egg dye (imported from Greece by Krinos Foods).

The other brand of egg dye is the Lyra (Lira) brand which is imported from Greece by Krinos Foods.  The directions on this packet are very similar to the NIKH brand, and are written in Greek, English, and French.  This packet should be enough to dye 50 eggs, but we are not making 50 eggs, so we expect that this, too, will give us a richer, deeper colour.  The eggs should be boiled to use this dye.  The directions, as we understand them, are like this:

Start by mixing the packet of colour in a small bowl of warm water to dissolve the powder.  We guessed at using half a cup of warm water.  This solution will be mixed into the large bowl of cool water to dye the eggs.  It should be enough water to cover 50 eggs.  We used the same 6 cups of water that we used for the other brand.

  

Then, add a glass  of vinegar.  How big of a glass, we don't know.  So, we used 8 ounces (equal to a drinking glass).  We have the dissolved dye, one glass of vinegar, and a big bowl of cool water mixed together.  Then, place the boiled eggs in a single layer in the dye.  Let them stay in the dye for 10-15 minutes.  

Check out this weird pattern that was left on top of the liquid -- you can see exactly where we dropped the eggs into the dye.

Using a slotted spoon, tongs, or a strainer, remove the eggs and place them on paper to dry.  (We still used a cooling rack on top of newspaper, trying to avoid those white spots.)  Allow the eggs to dry, then shine them using an oil-dipped cloth.  

Well, the two packets of egg colouring are used, and what do we have?  We have beautiful red eggs for Pascha.  It's so exciting to see these vibrant reds.  Although they are different shades of red -- one is orange-red and the other is blue-red.  They are both beautiful.  Once we shined them with some oil, they were so pretty, we didn't really want to use them to play the egg game.  But, we will.

And, just because we were curious, we boiled some more eggs and put them in the two dyes for a second round a few hours later.  Guess what?  The colour still came out a beautiful shade of red, more toward the pink side.  This was true for both dye packets.  They were not quite as deep in colour, but they were still a very attractive reddish-pink.  We think these two dyes made some of the best reds that we have ever achieved on the first round!  They were easy to use and clean enough.  Only our fingertips are red this year!  We now know that definitely we will buy these brands of egg dye again.

Now, for the onion skins...

First, we had to peel a lot of onions.  The directions tell us to use 15 onion skins.  But, we wanted to try both yellow and red, so that meant 30 onion skins.  Actually, it was not as bad as that.  You use only the dry skin that falls off.  Half the work is done for you by nature and gravity, all you have to do is take the onions out of the bag you bought them in.  Or, go to the grocery store and take the skins from there.  A lot of people peel off the dry crumbly skins and leave them with the stacks of onions.  So, you could just go by the store with a small bag and pick up other people's discards.  We use onions in almost everything, so we have been saving the skins specifically for this blog entry.  Now that we have them, what do we do?

Add vinegar.

Add water.

First, put 15 onion skins and 2 tablespoons of white vinegar in 4 1/2 cups of water in a pot.  We have two separate pots on the stove at the same time, so that we can see the red onion skins and the yellow onion skins.  We used the exact same amount of vinegar and water with the skins.  And, yes, we used the same amount of onion skins, too! 

Next, we allowed the pot to boil for about 5 minutes. Then, we put a cover on the pot, turned down the heat, and let the mixture simmer for 30 minutes.  We had to peek inside the pot to see what was happening with the onion skins...

Yellow onion skins

Red onion skins

We are surprised how much the red onion skins and the yellow onion skins look very much alike at this point.  They have another five or six minutes to simmer before we strain the liquids into a glass bowl (measuring cup) to cool to room temperature.  So, we wait...

Strain the yellow onion skins, but keep the liquid.

Strain the red onion skins, but keep the liquid.

Liquid from yellow onion skins on the left, and from red onion skins on the right.

Now that 30 minutes simmmering time has passed, we are going to strain the mixtures.  We are keeping them seperate just so we can see the actual results.  Also, by straining the liquid into measuring cups, we can see how much of the 4 1/2 cups of water remains.  By looking at the two mixtures, we see that 4 cups of each remain for us to colour our eggs.  They do have different hues, though.  Now, allow these to sit for a while until the liquids are room temperature.

Yellow onion skins

Red onion skins

Once the liquids reach room temperature, it is time to cook and colour the eggs.  First, put the eggs in the pan.  You need to keep a single layer, and make sure that there is enough liquid to cover the eggs.  We had a little bit less liquid than we needed, but did not have a smaller pot.  Oh well, we moved on regardless.  So, you put the eggs in the pot and then pour the onion skin juice over the eggs.  Put that on the heat and bring it up to a boil.  When the liquid reaches a boil, turn down the heat to simmering (low) and cover the pot.  Allow the eggs to simmer in the liquid for 20 minutes.  Then, pull out the eggs and allow them to cool.  If the eggs are not dark enough for your liking, then leave them in the dying liquid and put them in the fridge until they are the desired colour.

Red onion skins

Yellow onion skins

We are very impressed with the relative ease of this method.  Although the colour was not quite red -- it was more brown and the other was "burnt auburn."  They were interesting colours that looked very nice when combined with our variety of reds.  The addition of the browns really tied together the entire colour pallet that we had today.  Interestingly enough, we read and re-read the directions for the onion skin egg dying activity, and each of the pictures we have seen online have been of red eggs.  Initially, we could not figure out how the eggs would become that red from yellow onions.  That's part of why we wanted to try the red onion skins, too.  But, to our surprise, that was just a darker brown.  The deepness, the richness of the colours was impressive.  Too bad they just were not the exact shade we wanted.

So, when Pascha rolls around next year, and we are ready to dye our eggs, we are going to the grocery store fist to buy a couple of packets of dye from Greece.  They were easy to use, give us the colour we wanted, and took very little time or effort.  We want red that is deep and blood coloured to remind us of what Christ did for us.  The way we can get that is by purchasing a packet of dye for the eggs.

Holy Thursday

And as they were eating, he said, "Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me." And they were very sorrowful, and began to say to him one after another, "Is it I, Lord?" He answered, "He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me, will betray me. The Son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born." Judas, who betrayed him, said, "Is it I, Master?" He said to him, "You have said so." Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom."

The reading is from Matthew 21:30.

(Source: http://www.goarch.org/chapel/lectionary_view?type=G&code=406&event=1012&date=04/12/2012)