It's
getting close to Easter, the stores are jam-packed with chocolate eggs and stuffed
bunnies and marshmallow "Peeps" of every color,
and it all reminds me that it’s time to dye some eggs.
Since we have an abundance of them, I'd like
to try a new (to me) technique that sounds fun and a lot better than the usual
technique of coloring them in coffee cups filled with Paas dyes, which for some reason seemed to require sitting and
staring at them for hours on end, stirring them constantly to get an
"even" color. I have a feeling my mother told us they needed this
much attention in order to keep us out from underfoot. But back to the present: none of the eggs in my house are old enough
to “hard boil” (which is itself a misnomer but we'll save that for a cooking
blog). You see, I found out that older eggs are better candidates for boiling,
as their shells will come off MUCH easier when you peel them. I'm sure you've
cracked a hard boiled egg once or twice in your life and found that the shell
would not come off without taking gouges of egg white with it! That means the
egg was a pretty fresh egg; eggs which aren’t quite as fresh won’t have this
problem. So, you start out with eggs which are older. But how can you tell the
age of an egg? If you have chickens, you know how old the eggs in your refrigerator are. If you aren’t
a chicken/egg aficionado and think this is all a bunch of hooey, try this: put them in a bowl of water. If they sink,
they're fresh. If they float, they're old. That simple. You want one that is
somewhere between the sinking and the floating stage - standing on end is great
candidate for 'hard boiling.' (Now, don't put salt in that water, because
with enough salt, any egg will float. Try that with your kids and see if they
can figure out why that is, it's a good hands-on science experiment).
So
let’s get back to that tie-dye.
You need:
Old
silk ties (or scarves, or blouses, but I’ll write this as if I’m using a tie)
Scissors
White
cotton cloth (old t-shirt will do)
Twist-ties
String
(optional)
Pot
with water
Vinegar
Turn
the tie over and cut it up the middle. If it has a white fabric lining, remove
that & save, because you can use it in place of the cotton t-shirt above.
Wrap
up your egg(s) in the center of a piece of the tie; try to get the material as
flat as possible against the egg. Twist-tie it closed at the top. Here’s where
the optional string comes in. If you have it, tie some string tightly around
the egg to keep the material as flat as possible against the egg. In the image below, some are tied, some aren’t,
and only a few have the white cloth on them.
Then
do the same with the white material. At this point you have a nice, double-
wrapped egg.
Boil
water in a ceramic or glass pot. Don’t use metal, as it reacts with the
vinegar. Place the egg(s) in boiling water with about a tablespoon of white
vinegar. Then add the eggs. If the water
was at a rolling boil, you can at this point remove the pot and keep the eggs
covered for 20 minutes, or, you can boil the eggs for 20 minutes. I prefer the
former, because sometimes leaving the eggs on that high of heat will overcook
the yolks.
After
20 minutes drain the hot water and pour cold tap water over them until they are
cool to the touch, or simply place them in an ice bath for a minute. This step
is important, because it stops them from continuing to cook. Overcooked hard
boiled eggs – yuck. The yolks turn a little green. Still okay to eat, but not
very good looking.
Now
unwrap the egg(s) and look at what you have created! Below are some photos of eggs done in this
manner that I found online. (I currently don’t have any eggs old enough to
boil!)
