Original Ideas for Hard-Boiled Eggs {Friday Five}

After the eggs are dyed and the baskets filled, many families are left with dozens of boiled eggs. Hard-boiled eggs are full of protein, vitamins, and minerals. Mixing boiled eggs into egg salad, slicing into potato salad, or eating whole for breakfast is fine but with an abundance, maybe you want to try something new. Here are five unusual ideas:

1. Pickled Eggs - Local food truck The Coop has a serious following for their pickled eggs. Theirs have a light vinegar and herbal flavor. For a more colorful pickled egg, try pickling them in beet juice. Simply Recipes shares four pickled egg recipes.

2. Scotch Eggs - Leave it to the Scottish to devise a way to enrich an already robust food by wrapping a peeled hard-boiled egg in sausage and bread crumbs and then deep frying it. I've never eaten one but with Charcutepalooza bulk sausage in the freezer and an appreciation for saturated fats, I think we must make scotch eggs next week.

3. Cook Ethnic - Doro Wat, a common Ethiopian chicken stew, contains boiled eggs cooked in the spicy sauce. Boiled eggs sometimes make an appearance in Indian curries too. Make Chinese marbled tea eggs by crackling the shell of your boiled eggs and soaking them in soy sauce and spices. The Steamy Kitchen recipe for marbled tea eggs looks intriguing.

4. Asparagus Chimichurri - I know we will make my asparagus chimichurri with boiled egg again this week. It was so tasty! Toss finely chopped boiled eggs on any warm green vegetable for added richness and flavor.

5. Slingshot Ammunition - If you know Alex, it might surprise you to learn that he was in a fraternity for one year during college. It will likely not surprise you that one of his fondest frat memories is of hurling things off the top floor of the house with an oversize slingshot. When I asked him for a unique idea for using boiled eggs, he instantly said "slingshot". I can imagine that a hard-boiled egg is a great ammunition, though I hope we won't be using ours in this way!

What are your favorite ways to use hard-boiled eggs?

Making and Using Natural Egg Dyes

The lovely Catherine of Photo Kitchen came over last week to take photographs for Hounds in the Kitchen Egg Week 2011. Yesterday, I shared how to blow out eggshells. Continue reading for recipes, tips, and even an eggshell planting project.

Encouraged by my friend Vanessa Prentice, I made egg dyes from edible materials this year. I was surprised to find that natural dyes are easy to make, completely safe to consume, and don't stain your fingertips.

I made dyes from purple cabbage, red beet, and ground tumeric, pictured left to right above. Other edibles that Vanessa recommends include blueberries (purple color), tea (light brown), and coffee (dark brown). Green is a particularly difficult color to achieve, she says.

I boiled the edible materials in water with a splash of vinegar to act as a mordant. A mordant is a chemical that encourages dye to attach to a surface. These mixes simmered until the colorful edible until the liquid was brightly colored, about an hour.

I strained out the solids and poured the liquids into jars. Because I was using them the next day, I stored the dye in the refrigerator overnight.

Next, I gathered the prepared the eggs for decorating. Some were boiled and most were blown out for a more permanent canvass.

Lil wrapped the eggs in string, tape, or rubber bands for patterns. Shaped stickers also make white space on the shells.

Finally, it was time to dunk the eggs. I should have predicted that the hollow eggs would float, but I didn't until we actually observed them. Because we wanted solid colored eggs, I gently weighed them down with glass jars on top of the dye.

The hardest part came next: waiting. Natural dyes make the deep rich colors if left in the dye bath for 24 hours. The blue egg in the picture on left was in the bath for about 2 hours; the one on the right soaked for 24 hours.

Finally we had a rainbow of dyed eggs with fun patterns! Are you dying eggs this year? Will you experiment with natural dyes?

All photos with the Photo Kitchen watermark belong to Catherine and were generously shared with me. You may purchase copies and view the whole set of photographs in the online gallery. Use the coupon code houndscrossover to receive 25% off prices until May 15.

Added to Hearth and Soul Volume 44.

How to Blow Out Eggs with Photo Kitchen

The lovely Catherine of Photo Kitchen came over last week to take photographs. We ended up doing so many fun things with eggs, including decorating and eating them, that will be sharing them for the next five days during Hounds in the Kitchen Egg Week. Inspired by Vanessa Prentice's workshop at the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association annual conference, I wanted to try my hand at making natural egg dyes this year. I suspected they might be really cool and wanted to create eggs that would last for years. A boiled egg in shell wasn't going to cut it and, besides, there are only so many boiled eggs our family wants to eat.

So I blew out some eggs. Removing the raw yolk and white from the shell to preserve the shell is relatively simple and allows the eggshell to be decorated and displayed for years to come. Here's how I do it:

First, create a small hole in each end of the egg. I find that a sharp short nail (this one came from a picture hanging kit) works well. I grasp it and the egg firmly and tap gently until a hole is started. I try to punch through the hole so that it takes the round shape of the nail.

Gently shake the egg to break the yolk. Then, place your lips over one hole and blow with pressure over a bowl. To be sure you aren't going to contract salmonella, use a fresh egg from a known source and try not to ingest the raw contents. The white and yolk will slowly drip into the reservoir.

When the white and yolk have totally escaped, rinse the egg. Put it somewhere safe to dry thoroughly before decorating. You can use the egg contents for cooking. They keep in the refrigerator for a few days.

Come back tomorrow to see how we made and used natural dyes from edible materials.

All photos with the Photo Kitchen watermark were taken by Catherine and generously shared here. You may purchase copies and view the whole set of photographs in the online gallery with password lileaster. Use the coupon code houndscrossover to receive 25% off prices until May 15.