Shakshuka
Eggs poached in a spiced pepper and tomato sauce, cooked and served in the same pan. Bread on the side is the whole plan.
Nutrition Info (per serving)
- 420
- Calories
- 21g
- Protein
- 26g
- Fat
- 24g
- Carbs
Ingredients
- 6 eggs
- 800 g tinned whole plum tomatoes
- 2 red bell peppers
- 1 large onion
- 4 cloves garlic
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- 1/2 tsp cayenne
- 1 tsp sugar
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 100 g feta
- Small bunch coriander or parsley
- Salt and black pepper
- Crusty bread, to serve
Instructions
- 1Slice the onion and the peppers into thin strips. Slice the garlic. Crush the tinned tomatoes by hand into rough pieces.
- 2Heat the olive oil in a wide, deep frying pan over medium heat. Cook the onion and peppers with a pinch of salt for 12 to 15 minutes, stirring now and then, until genuinely soft and starting to colour. This is the longest step and the one that carries the dish — undercooked peppers stay squeaky and the sauce tastes raw.
- 3Add the garlic, cumin, smoked paprika and cayenne and cook for 90 seconds, until fragrant. Toasting the spices in oil rather than adding them with the tomatoes is what stops them tasting dusty.
- 4Add the crushed tomatoes, the sugar and a good pinch of salt. Simmer for 10 to 12 minutes, until thick enough that a spoon dragged across the pan leaves a channel that fills in slowly.
- 5Taste and season properly. Once the eggs are in you cannot stir it again, so the sauce has to be right now.
- 6Make six shallow wells in the sauce with the back of a spoon and crack an egg into each.
- 7Cover the pan and cook over low heat for 6 to 8 minutes, until the whites are just set and the yolks still wobble. Check at 6 — carryover heat keeps cooking them after the pan comes off.
- 8Crumble over the feta, scatter with chopped herbs and grind over black pepper. Serve straight from the pan with bread.
Shakshuka is North African by origin, Israeli by adoption, and eaten at every meal of the day. It is also one of the few one-pan dishes where the pan genuinely does everything, including serving.
The sauce is the dish
Everything good about shakshuka happens before the eggs go in. Fifteen minutes of cooking onion and pepper down until they are soft and sweet, then a proper reduction of the tomatoes, is not padding — it is the recipe.
Rushing that stage gives you eggs poached in thin tomato juice. The sauce should be thick enough to hold the shape of a well when you push a spoon through it. If it is not, keep simmering.
Season before the eggs
Once six eggs are sitting on the surface, stirring is impossible. Anything you add after that point sits on top rather than through it.
Taste the sauce and get the salt right while you can still move it around.
Cover the pan, keep the heat low
The eggs cook from below by conduction and from above by trapped steam. Without a lid the tops stay raw and translucent while the bottoms overcook against the pan.
Low heat matters as much as the lid. A vigorous simmer makes the whites rubbery before the yolks have warmed through.
Six to eight minutes is the usual window, but it depends on your pan and how cold the eggs were. Pull it when the whites have just turned opaque — they will firm up further in the residual heat on the way to the table.
Whole tomatoes, hand-crushed
The same argument as any tomato sauce: tinned chopped tomatoes are firmed with calcium chloride and stay stubbornly cubic. Whole plum tomatoes crushed in your fist break down into something with irregular texture and body.
Spices in the oil
Ground cumin and paprika are fat-soluble. Ninety seconds in hot oil before the liquid arrives releases far more aroma than the same spices stirred into a simmering sauce, where they mostly stay suspended and taste powdery.
Variations worth knowing
Green shakshuka swaps the tomato base for spinach, courgette and herbs. Adding merguez sausage, browned first, is common and very good. A spoonful of harissa in place of the cayenne shifts it toward Tunisia, where the dish probably started.
Nutrition
Around 420 calories a serving with two eggs each — high in protein, low in carbohydrate before the bread arrives. Red peppers and tomatoes together make it a strong source of vitamin C and vitamin A, and the eggs bring B12 and choline.
The sauce keeps for four days and freezes well. Make a double batch and shakshuka becomes a ten-minute breakfast on the second morning.
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