Sweet & Simple: Dye Eggs with Rice and Food Coloring

I have never had much success with boiling eggs or coloring them for Easter.  My solution generally is to just not do it!  My girls, however, love to color eggs.  Recently, I learned that you could boil eggs in a rice cooker.  I also heard of a simple and easy way to color eggs that I was dying to try.  If I could find a simple way to make my girls happy, I was all for it.  I'm happy to say that my little experiment was a success, and that we had so much fun that I'm even willing to try it again!

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The first hurdle to overcome was finding a simple way to boil eggs.  I have never been successful with boiling eggs.  They never come out consistently cooked, and the shells are ridiculously hard to get off. When my mother-in-law gave me a rice cooker for Christmas, she let me know that you could cook eggs in the steamer basket of the rice cooker.  My husband also recently gave me an Instant Pot (pressure cooker) for Valentines Day which also boasts a simple way to cook eggs.

Rice Cooker Boiled Eggs:  

So this is ridiculously easy.  Put two cups of water in your rice cooker and place eggs in the steam basket. Close the lid and select the "steam" function, and you're good to go.  Except for one egg, they all turned out beautifully.  The shell came off clean and easy, and the eggs were consistently cooked through. This could have been due to a weak shell, but it was fun to look at!

Instant Pot Boiled Eggs:

Cooking eggs in the Instant Pot is very similar.  Put one cup of water in your cooker and place eggs on the steamer rack.  Close the lid and set the venting to closed.  Next press the manual setting and set the pressure to low.  Set the timer for seven minutes and let the magic happen.

The eggs all turned out beautifully, so now it was time to make them pretty!

Dye Eggs with Rice

I love this method to dye eggs because it makes vibrant eggs, and it is so easy to clean up afterwards.  Here's what you need:

• zip lock bags
• rice
• food coloring
• hard boiled eggs
• white sharpies
• metallic sharpies

Place 1/2 cup of rice in a baggie.  Add a few drops of color to the rice.  I used seven drops of green and three drops of yellow. My girls used several different colors.

 

Gently place the egg in the baggie and work the rice around the egg until it is colored to your liking.

 

If you want to do a second egg in the same bag, you'll have to add extra coloring to the bag, or you might just want to have a lighter colored egg.  It only takes a couple of minutes and you end up with a beautiful and unique egg.

The eggs turned out beautifully and we let them dry on a drying rack for thirty minutes.  My girls love to doodle on anything, so we pulled out our white sharpie markers and metallic sharpies had fun embellishing the eggs further.

I love how they all turned out.  They are beautiful and unique and it was SO simple to do.  Just my style!

How do you like to dye eggs?