Dye eggs red with yellow onions and make "scratch eggs" for Easter

From left, a brown egg, a white egg dyed 15 minutes in yellow-onion-skin dye, white eggs dyed overnight with scratched patterns made by a paper towel and, next, a knife,Dye Easter eggs red by boiling them with the skins of yellow onions.

Seeing this claim on several websites, I decided to try it. I collected the papery outer skins from yellow onions for a few weeks until there were enough to half fill a 10-quart stainless-steel stock pot. I'd estimate that the amount was from at least a dozen large onions. 

I added six cups of water to the pot, brought it to a boil, pressed the skins down into the water, turned off the heat and let it sit overnight. The water looked nice and orange, just as one website said it would. Then I brought the water to boiling again and let is sit covered until it cooled down.

Next, I poured 4 cups of the onion water into a smaller pot, added 2 tablespoons of vinegar and four white eggs. I threw in as many of the onion skins as I could fit and brought the eggs to a boil. Then I turned off the heat and let them sit for 15 minutes. When I first put the eggs in, they immediately took on the nice orange color of the liquid. Since I was so excited about the possibility of the eggs turning red, I made the mistake of not leaving one out to see how the lighter dye would hold (More on that later.)

When I took the eggs out after 15 minutes, they were about the color of brown eggs. NOT very exciting. So I left out one of the eggs for comparison and put the pot with the other three in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, those were a more pleasing terra cotta red, but the dye did not take evenly. Some areas had lines in places where the onion skins had touched them in the pot. 

This made me wonder if perhaps the first woman to make "scratch eggs" was disappointed by an uneven Easter egg dye job and decided right then and there to use a sharp implement to save it by  scratching away at the dye to make pretty patterns that would camouflage an unsatisfactory dye job.

Here's a video showing the "scratch" process. (Focus on the work and try to ignore the fly)

Over the last few weeks, I've probably watched a hundred videos about egg decorating, mostly Slavic methods,  in at least six different languages. I now know why serious egg decorators hold an egg up to the light to look for imperfections in the shell. Those imperfections don't accept dye evenly. It is also recommended to wipe eggs clean with vinegar.

I did not do either, and my eggs dyed unevenly (next time no onion skins in the pot), and the dye was unstable. The third egg from the left above, has a random scratchy pattern made by the paper towel I was gingerly using to dab the egg dry. I learned from videos that natural dyes will come off easily when wet, but I had successfully dyed white eggs blue using a similar boiling method with raw red cabbage leftovers. That dye didn't rub off quite as easily.

A paper towel rubbed off lines of the onion-skin dye while the egg was still wet. Since the paper towel did so much damage, I decided to rub it all over the egg for an abstract pattern. e I had learned from previous misfortune that water pooling beneath a damp dyed egg can cause a stain, so I set each one on a small seltzer bottle cap to dry.

The dye had set a bit more on the second egg I dried, but it had those scratches. I took out a knife with a short blade and scratched very rough flower shapes around each of the scratches. I let all the eggs sit to dry. When dry, the dye was much more stable, and didn't rub off easily. Some of the red-orange color seemed to have bled into what had been the white scratched away area, creating an effect I like.

I'd recommend the onion dying with the tweaks mentioned. If you want orange to terra-cotta red eggs for Easter, I would suggest saving up all the skins from cooking with a lot of yellow onions (which, at my produce store, are marked as such and not the same as Spanish onions.)