Making Red Eggs - How to dye the red eggs to celebrate Easter Greek style

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Dying Greek Red Easter Eggs

Crete offers up some great recipes and meals taken from the many Taverna's dotted across the island of Crete, many of these Taverna's offer home cooked meals prepared for years with the recipes handed down through the generations from mother to daughter. Holidays To Crete has pulled together a select few of our favourites recipes for you to cook at home.

You will find the Cretan recipes have a good balance of ingredients, and although may seem fat laden in places work out to offer an excellent diet, and as almost all recipes are cooked in olive oil, it offers a great reduction in saturated fats you find in sunflower oils.

This recipe is broken down into description, ingredients and cooking method.

Greek Red Easter eggs (in Greek: kokkina avga, κόκκινα αυγά, are perhaps the brightest symbol of Greek Easter, representing the blood of Christ and rebirth.

We also dye eggs other colours, but rarely will a Greek Easter be celebrated without lots of red eggs. Commercial dyes are available, but this old-fashioned natural method creates red eggs with a deep rich colour. The following recipe is for one dozen red eggs.

Ingredients

Fresh uncooked eggs at room temperature

Yellow (Spanish) onion skins

White vinegar

Saucepan

Slotted spoon

Paper towels

Cooling racks

Olive (or other edible) oil for polishing

Preparation and Cooking

1. Start with 12 medium-to-small eggs.

2. Carefully remove any material clinging to the surface of the eggs.

3. Make the dye with the onion skins: In a stainless saucepan, place skins of 15 yellow (Spanish) onions and 2 tablespoons of white vinegar in 4 1/2 cups of water and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes.

4. Strain dye into a glass bowl, and let cool to room temperature. (Don't be fooled by the orange colour.)

5. In a stainless saucepan (around 8 1/4 inches in diameter), add the cooled strained dye and eggs at room temperature (up to 1 dozen). The eggs should be in one layer and covered by the dye.

6. Bring to a boil over medium heat. When boiling, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer.

7. Dyeing time will be affected by the colour of the eggs. Start checking for colour at 12-15 minutes. Do not simmer longer than 20 minutes (see step 9 if they aren't red enough).

8. When eggs are the right colour, proceed to step 10.

9. If eggs are not a red enough colour after 20 minutes, leave in the pot and remove from heat. When the pot as cooled enough, place in refrigerator and let sit until desired colour is reached.

10. Remove eggs with a slotted spoon and cool on racks.
11. When they can be handled, coat lightly with olive (or other edible) oil and polish with paper towelling.
12. Refrigerate until time to use.

Red Easter Eggs
Moderate
60 Minutes
No

Greek Recipes

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