Easter Egg Dyed Potatoes

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Want to dye potatoes to look like Easter Eggs? In this guide, you’ll learn how to color potatoes like Easter Eggs for Easter!

Have you seen the price of eggs lately? They’re obnoxiously high! So skip the hard-boiled eggs this year and dye potatoes instead.

How to Dye Potatoes like Easter Eggs

Dying potatoes for Easter is a simple and easy process and you probably have most of the supplies already in your home.

Supplies Needed:

• Baby Delicious White or Yukon Gold Potatoes
• Water Based Food Coloring
• Small Paint Brushes
• Small Bowls (optional)
• Water (optional)
• Paper Towels (optional)
• Rubber Gloves (optional)
• Hairspray (optional)

How to Dye Potatoes for Easter

You’ll want to get a couple of small dishes of water, some paper towels, and rubber gloves. The water and paper towels are for cleaning the brushes, and gloves are for protecting hands from the dye. This isn’t necessary, but I highly recommend it.

Grab a potato and put one drop of dye directly on it. Use a paintbrush to spread the food coloring around. You can either cover the entire potato in one color or do multiple colors, whichever you prefer.

You may have to add one more drop of food coloring to the potato to fully color it, depending on the size, but one drop of food coloring goes a long way.

Place the dyed potatoes on paper towels and let dry for 10 minutes. If you don’t want any of the dye to rub off later on when handling them, give them a light coating of hairspray and let them dry for a few more minutes. If you coat the potatoes with hairspray they cannot be eaten!

Enjoy!

Tips and Tricks for Dying Potatoes like Easter Eggs

What food coloring do you use to dye potatoes like Easter eggs? Gel dye never dries, so I don’t suggest using it. If you do, do an extremely thin layer of dye and leave them untouched overnight to dry. I highly suggest using a water-based food coloring only.

Can you use other dye methods for dying potatoes? We tried dyeing the potatoes with the Kool-Aid method and the traditional egg dyeing method with dye, water, and vinegar in a cup. Neither worked. The potato gained some color, but it was very light and it didn’t look good.

We also tried wrapping a coffee filter tightly around the potato and secured the top with a rubber band. We then directly put drops of water-based food coloring on the coffee filter until it was covered in multiple colors. We let it dry for 10 minutes before unwrapping it and it turned into a cute tie-dye potato, but it still wasn’t near as vibrant and pretty as the paintbrush method.

If you use hairspray, you cannot eat the potatoes. However, it definitely keeps things from being dyed.
Do not peel the potatoes or they will be wet and gooey. Quite the mess, although they turn gorgeous colors.

Can dyed potatoes be eaten? Yes, as long as you didn’t spray them with hairspray. You can rinse them off and try to wash most of the dye and then cook them your preferred way. The food coloring mostly dyes the skin so the inside of the potato won’t dye, but if you go to peel them the color from the skin could transfer onto the potato some.

The white and gold potatoes were the best for dyeing, and the baby potatoes were the perfect size for little hands.

Do you need to wash the potatoes? This depends on the potato. White and gold potatoes, especially the baby ones, are pretty clean usually so they wouldn’t need t be washed, but if you see that your potatoes are covered in dirt you can wash them off. Make sure to let them fully dry before dying them.