Easter might be my favorite holiday. I love watching the kids discover their colorful baskets, I love the powerful church service (I always cry), I love the Paschal Sunday dinner with the family, I love the freshly baked breads like Italian Easter bread or Kulich, I love hiding the bright plastic shells for the kiddos to have their annual egg hunt, and I love decorating Easter eggs.
I prefer just the regular dyed variety, but my girls love getting the different kits they sell: glitter, tie-dye, and the ones that come with the different character stickers and such. I dyed Easter eggs as an adult long before I had children of my own to do it with, because I love it so much.
I typically do mine just a day or two before Resurrection Sunday, and then I keep them in the fridge to snack on. There’s something kind of fun about opening the fridge and seeing all the brightly colored eggs in there, waiting to be eaten. For me, this is one craft that will never get old, and I’m sure I’ll be doing it just for my own amusement even when I’m old and wrinkled.
While making Easter eggs in the US is seen as just a fun kids’ activity, its roots are deeply religious, and in some parts of the world it still has rich symbolic significance.
Did you know that the lowly egg in and of itself had religious connotations long before Christianity?
Ancient civilizations such as the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Sumerians, Hindus, and others all had creation myths that held that the world came forth out of a giant ovum. Both the Egyptians and Sumerians frequently placed gold and silver representations in their tombs. Archeologists have even found engraved ostrich eggs throughout Africa that date back 60,000 years.
This evidence tells us that decorating eggshells was an ancient tradition for a long time before the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ. After the advent of Christianity as a religion, the egg became a symbol for the early church, as a physical representation of all that the Paschal season signifies.
The shell of the egg represents the tomb while the inside represents the possibility for new life – both in reality, when a baby chick is born, and figuratively, as a sign of the new life believers in Christianity seek.
In short, the egg has possibly the strongest religious connotation of any of the items we traditionally associate with Paschal Sunday. If you’re like the vast majority of Christians, you will have at least a dozen or so hardboiled babies that are decked out in their finest come Easter morning. You may find yourself wondering how you will ever be able to eat all of those leftovers.
Now, I don’t have too many worries about them ever going bad in my home, because every member of our family will eat plain hardboiled eggs with a little salt for a yummy, protein-packed snack. Not everyone loves them that way, though.
Good thing there are flavor-packed classic deviled eggs, or deviled eggs filled with guacamole for a fresh update on the classic.
Of course, sliced hardboiled egg is always delicious on top of a salad.
And, if you take a look at my article on the traditional foods of Easter, you’ll find some other great advice!
For some more inspiration, I have a few other recipe ideas for you to choose from. I hope this helps with any leftover predicaments that you may experience! For more on the nutritional content of eggs and the variety of different colored shells that can occur naturally, check out this post.
Egg Salad
Here is our favorite recipe for a classic egg salad, with a few fresh twists!
We use freshly squeezed lemon juice, as well as shallots to subtly update the flavors.
Potato Salad
If you love a classic potato salad, the cool and creamy side with simple ingredients and flavors, mix up our homemade recipe. We love serving it for easy lunches and casual dinners!
We flavor mayonnaise-based dressing with a little vinegar and mustard. And it thickly coats buttery pieces of golden potatoes, tender morsels of hard-boiled eggs, and crunchy pieces of onion and celery.
- 2 pounds elbow macaroni noodles cooked and drained
- 12 hardboiled eggs peeled and chopped
- 4 green onions finely chopped
- 2 stalks celery finely diced
- 1/4 cup pickle relish*
- 3 cups mayo
- 1-2 tablespoons salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 teaspoon fresh dill chopped
- 1 teaspoon fresh tarragon chopped
- Combine all ingredients in a large bowl until they are well-mixed. This salad is best made the night before and refrigerated until ready to serve.
About Ashley Martell
Ashley has enjoyed creative writing since she was six years old, when she wrote her first short story. She majored in English literature at the University of Montevallo. After years of professional work, she is now a stay-at-home mom of three, who uses her craft to write about her life and adventures in and out of the kitchen.
While these recipes look great and everything, I find that the most awkward part is when you peel off the decorated shells and throw them away…It feels like such a waste even though it’s just shells….
Is there a way to preserve the shells somehow??
Actually, yes, there’s quite a few things:
Ground eggshells can be a nontoxic & abrasive clean for anything. Mix with a soapy water for a powerful clean. Keep ground eggshells in your kitchen sink strainer. They trap more than the strainer & clean your pipes as they slowly break down. You can use them in a compost heap. Eggshells in apple cider vinegar is great for minor skin irritations or itchy skin. Also it can be used to sweeten coffee grounds so the coffee itself is not as bitter.
If you really want to try something out of the box dry eggshells in the oven at 250-degree for 30 minutes, crush shells with a rolling pin in a Ziploc until they’re a fine powder, & mix it with your dog’s food as a great calcium supplement.
Everything has a use!
Wait, seriously? I’ve never heard of putting eggshells into apple cider vinegar before…Wouldn’t it change the texture though? Like maybe you’d find bits of eggshell in your drink?
My sister used to blow out eggs and then decorate the shells…but it has to be done with raw eggs as there’s really no way to blow out a cooked egg! I suppose you could always do it this way and then carefully decorate the shells, but they are very fragile, so wouldn’t be good for an egg hunt; they’d simply be decorative.
Sometimes it like y’all read my mind. I decorate Easter eggs because the kids love it so much! Unfortunately, I’m the only one who’ll eat them. Deviled and egg salad, however, will be gone almost immediately. As far as the deviled eggs, my recipes don’t include bacon on and I like that idea a lot. They’re definitely going to be a hit! Thank you!
I like your ideas on what to do with all of those decorated eggs; I am usually at a loss and hate to waste food by throwing them away after Easter. Generally my daughter likes to leave some in a basket on the table. I think it is important to note that only refrigerated hard-boiled eggs ones should be used for food purposes if they are not going to be eaten immediately after cooking.
I hear ya, Ashley. I always cry at Easter.
It’s great to think of ways to use up the eggs. I hate wasting anything but especially food.
My mom used to wake us up early to find eggs, and then we’d have hard boiled ones for breakfast before church, deviled with dinner, and blended in various salads and cold casseroles for days, lol. I’m not a fan of egg salad, but they do work well in other types of salads like your potato and pasta ones. I don’t even eat them now, but I used to like them cut up in a lettuce salad with meats, cheeses, and veggies, as well.
Is it just myself & my family who really have no difficulty scarfing down the eggs left from Easter? Everyone in my house loves hard boiled eggs. Especially with Sriracha! That’s my go to for any hard boiled egg ever made! My children & guy don’t share my enthusiasm so I think I may stick with the egg salad. =P
Oh man, eggs with sriracha is SO FREAKIN AWESOME. Put some of that magic sauce on your egg salads and devilled eggs and I guarantee it’ll taste so much better.
I have sriracha in my fridge and I haven’t tried it on eggs yet. This must be remedied soon. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself. Hot sauce in general tends to be pretty awesome on eggs, after all. Thank you both for bringing it up!
There’s no problem making egg salad in my home as I love having it as a side or in a sandwich. In the UK, we call it egg mayonnaise. I also like to add a spoon of pesto to add flavor, especially to the potato or pasta salad. Sometimes, just mayonnaise and some wholegrain mustard is also nice and simple.
Okay, adding some pesto sounds like a really good idea. Pesto is so good. I think I’ll try it in some pasta salad, but I never would have thought of adding it to eggs.
I need to get a little more daring in the kitchen and try new things. There are so many things on this site and even in the comments that I never would have thought of trying. This is one of them.
I love decorating the eggs with the children, it is great to see the smiles on there faces once they have completed them! Hard boiled eggs are lovely too!
I love to decorate my eggs with different colors and sometimes I make rainbow eggs. I also let my kids draw on them. They really enjoy it!
Egg salad with some ham on the sides it’s a great appetizer for Easter. It’s one of my favourites to prepare.
It’s so strange to me that people decorate hard boiled eggs. In my part of the U.S. we decorate the empty egg shells, fill them up with confetti, and those are the eggs used in the Easter egg hunt. When the kids fill their baskets, they then proceed to have a full blown confetti egg war, chasing each other around and breaking the eggs on their heads. Confetti everywhere! Confetti in places where you never thought confetti would be. LOL
I remember my mom started collecting and cleaning out the empty egg shells pretty early in the season. I would decorate them and fill them with confetti. These days, I don’t even think kids decorate the eggs anymore. You can buy the eggs already decorated and filled with confetti at Walmart.
The salads above look heavenly and quite inviting, and amazingly simple to make…my best would be the potato salad plus it has bacon which happens to be my favorite 🙂 …as for egg painting and decorating, we never did that, my mom and me, i guess when my little ones tag along one day, i’ll teach them how to do it, although looking at the pictures above, one’s got to be quite artsy to do that…right?
The potato salad is the first thing I’ll be making too! In fact, it’s already on the menu for tonight’s dinner – I’m just doing a light meal as everyone is full from too much chocolate earlier in the day!
Wow, I’ll definitely keep in mind the background to the tradition every time I dye eggs! Who knew a simple breakfast icon held so much beauty with its shell symbolizing a tomb, and the inside representing new life. And thanks for the egg salad recipe! Looks like I’ve found my new Easter recipe! 😉
Well thanks for this article as I’m currently looking at a whole host of boiled eggs left over from this afternoon! I was dreading boring old egg sandwiches for the next two days so these recipes are providing some much-needed inspiration!
Easter–the whole season in fact is really important where I come from, especially in the traditional Italian and Irish Catholic communities. Egg salad is the first thing I make when trying to use up my easter eggs. As far as experience though, I don’t get that many intact eggs after the kids’ hunt.
Since Easter is on it’s way this post caught my eye. I did not know the “egg” had such rich history. That was very interesting to know how the actual designing of the eggs came about. I will be decorating eggs this year with my kids and possibly having an Easter egg hunt. This post made me more excited to do so….and what a clever and yummy way to recycle the eggs.
I’ve never thought of using leftover Easter eggs in cooking, perhaps the coloring just has me worried of possible toxins.
I’ll definitely try looking around for some certified food-safe dyes for this festive season!
In our household eggs go pretty fast! We love eating them all kinds of ways, however, I’ve never had an egg salad before, I’ve seen it, just never ate it or even tried to attempt to make it, which is interesting since it seems so easy to make. Might have to try and make it one day.