White House Easter Egg Roll to feature 18,000 NC eggs

Children and families from across the country will soon gather on the South Lawn for the White House Easter Egg Roll. This year's event will feature thousands of North Carolina eggs, hard boiled and dyed right here in the Triad. 

In 1878 President Rutherford B. Hayes issued the order: if any children should come to the White House to roll their Easter eggs, they would be allowed to do so. Nearly a century and a half later, the tradition continues — this year with 18,000 Braswell Family Farms eggs out of Nashville, North Carolina. To prepare those eggs for Easter Monday, they turned to longtime collaborator Chef Don McMillan of the The Stocked Pot Fun Culinary Events in Winston-Salem. It took him and his sous chefs two days of prep and a week of 8–10-hour shifts: hard-boiling, cooling, and dying. He says 4,000 of the eggs were not decorated.

"Those are going to be colored by the kids," says McMillan. "And they're kids from every state — all 50 states. They have to actually put in a lottery for that. These families were chosen to be there. And they've got a lot of good things happening. They're going to have entertainment for the kids. They're going to dye eggs. They're going to be given a souvenir wooden egg."

This year's White House Easter Egg Roll takes place on Monday, April 18, in Washington D.C. The event was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.