Shakshuka — North African Eggs in Tomato
Eggs poached in a spiced North African tomato and pepper sauce, served bubbling in the pan with bread for scooping.
Method
- Heat the olive oil in a wide, shallow frying pan over medium heat. Cook the onion and bell pepper together for 10 minutes, until genuinely soft and sweet.
- Add the garlic, cumin, paprika, caraway and chilli and stir for 1 minute until aromatic.
- Add the tomato paste and cook for 2 minutes, then add the tomatoes, sugar, salt and pepper.
- Simmer uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is thick enough to hold a channel when you drag a spoon across the pan. A thin sauce will not support the eggs.
- Taste and adjust the seasoning now; once the eggs are in, stirring is no longer possible.
- Make six wells in the sauce with the back of a spoon, spacing them evenly, and crack an egg into each.
- Season the eggs, cover the pan and cook over low heat for 6 to 9 minutes. Check at 6: the whites should be just set and the yolks still soft and wobbly.
- Scatter over the feta and herbs, and take the pan off the heat while the yolks are slightly under, as they keep cooking in the hot sauce.
- Serve immediately, straight from the pan, with plenty of bread.
How to make Shakshuka — North African Eggs in Tomato
Shakshuka began as a North African dish, Tunisian and Libyan in origin, and has since spread across the Middle East and onto breakfast menus worldwide. The principle is unchanged: a thick spiced tomato and pepper sauce, with eggs poached directly in it.
Build the sauce properly
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The sauce is the dish. Give the onion and pepper a full ten minutes to soften before any tomato goes in, and reduce the tomatoes until they are thick and jammy. Rushing leaves a watery pan in which the eggs spread and poach unevenly.
Wells, not stirring
Make proper indentations with the back of a spoon so each egg sits contained in the sauce. Crack each egg into a cup first if you are not confident, then slide it into its well.
Watch the yolks
The covered cooking happens fast. Start checking at six minutes and pull the pan while the yolks still move; the residual heat of the sauce finishes them. Overcooked shakshuka loses the sauce-and-yolk combination that defines it.
Variations
Caraway and harissa push it towards Tunisia; feta and herbs are an Israeli addition; merguez sausage, chickpeas or wilted spinach all work. Serve with bread, never cutlery alone.
Traditional North African cookery, with Tunisian and Libyan roots, now eaten across the Middle East and beyond. Editorially researched from widely documented preparations, and not kitchen-tested by Axadle.
Contains egg, and dairy if finished with feta. Naturally gluten-free; bread served alongside contains gluten.
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