Shakshuka - Eggs Poached in Spicy Tomato Pepper Sauce

hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with shakshuka that's right we're doing breakfast for dinner although technically this was originally a dinner that became a breakfast so i guess we're really doing dinner for breakfast for dinner but regardless of when you serve this north african dish it's always comforting and delicious and never not fun to say in fact sometimes when i'm not even making this i'll just yell for no apparent reason shakshuka and now that you know about this i'm assuming you'll probably do the same but anyway let's go ahead and get started and what we'll do is we'll place a heavy skillet over medium-high heat and drizzle in a little bit of olive oil and as usual by a little bit i mean a lot and then to that we're going to add two ingredients some diced onions which is very traditional as well as some mushrooms which are definitely not traditional and we do also want to add some salt at this point and while the mushrooms are not a classic addition i really think they're amazing in this and for me just make the dish more savory and what we want to do here is cook these onions and mushrooms like i said over medium-high heat for i'm going to guess and say about 10 minutes or so until they give up any and all excess liquid and start to turn golden and as they start to take out a little bit of color that flavor is going to get meatier and in my opinion way more delicious so like i said we're going to take our time and we're going to cook them until they look something like this so those are looking pretty good right there and at this point we can introduce another key ingredient our peppers we're going to use three kinds even though it only looks like two i have some diced sweet red bell pepper as well as a red jimmy dardello pepper which is also mild and then as you can probably see one sliced jalapeno and we will stir that in and we'll cook that for about five minutes until those peppers start to soften up a little bit and then once that's happened before we add our tomato product what we want to do is add our spices and cook those for a couple minutes in this mixture so at this point i'm going to add a spoon of cumin as well as some paprika and by the way any kind of ground chili pepper would work here we're also going to do a little touch of turmeric which by all reports is super good for you and you should try to eat a lot of we're also going to add some cayenne of course you knew that was coming and then last but not least a little bit of freshly ground black pepper and we'll stir in those spices and we'll let those cook for a minute or two in this mixture to as i like to say wake up the flavors which really has to do with the flavor of those spices sort of infusing into the oil as opposed to adding them after the tomatoes go in when everything's kind of wet and does it really make that big of a difference who knows but why take any chances so like i said we'll cook those spices for a minute or two at which point we can finally add our crushed tomatoes and of course unless you're using fresh tomatoes you're going to want to use those san marzano tomatoes and sure i guess you could use a lower quality if you wanted that's up to you but remember you're in charge of making sure your shakshuka is off the hookah so suit yourself but i'm going to go with the san marzano's and then because i do want to simmer this mixture for about 15 or 20 minutes i'm gonna go ahead and stir in a nice splash of water so things don't thicken up and reduce too quickly and i would say about medium heat is probably the best but you can adjust that up or down a little bit depending on what you're seeing in the pan but i do want to let this simmer about like that stirring occasionally for like i said about 15 or 20 minutes to really give those veggies time to soften up and sweeten up and just generally give all those flavors time to meld together okay so i let mine simmer stirring occasionally and approximately 15 to 20 minutes later it looked like this and by the way even though we added some salt at the beginning you definitely want to taste this for seasoning before we add our eggs on top so make sure you check this especially for salt and then once we've determined this mixture is cooked long enough what we'll do is we'll prepare the surface for our eggs and what i mean by that is we're going to take a spoon and make sort of a depression in that sauce one for each egg we're going to place down which in my case is going to be five so i'm going to make five little wells into which we're going to carefully place our eggs and to do that successfully here is a huge and very important tip do not crack the egg directly into your sauce crack it into a ramekin first because you're going to be able to see it before it goes in here okay so very important crack it into a ramekin first that way there's no possible way the yolk can break whoops looks like that one broke anyway so let me rephrase that by using a ramekin you can lessen your chances of a broken yoke but it still could happen and yeah i probably should have stopped the camera and fished that one out and had them all come out perfectly but i didn't and no it has nothing to do with ethics or keeping it real it has much more to do with laziness plus as you'll see it's really not that big of a problem so i really wasn't that upset allegedly and then once our eggs are down we will give each one a little bit of seasoning with some salt and freshly ground black pepper and then all we need to complete this dish is to keep simmering this on about medium heat i'd say until our eggs are cooked to our liking which can be for someone like me very very soft to others who like it cooked all the way through like a hard-boiled egg and while some people like to pop this in the oven to finish the eggs i prefer to just do it right on top of the stove with a cover except i don't have a cover that fits this pan so in that case i just use a sheet pan which totally works fine and this is not going to happen super quick but you definitely don't want to go anywhere you got to pay attention so we'll keep that covered and then every once in a while we'll give our suga a little looka and right here was kind of getting close and one thing to keep in mind here if you want your eggs soft like i always do you're definitely going to want to err on the side of taking this off a little too early because that mixture is super hot and by the time you plate this up and find some toasted bread that egg is going to continue to cook so i gave it a few more minutes and then right here even though it was still under done i could tell i was only a couple minutes away so i proceeded on to the final touches which really you could do at any time but i tend to do it at the end here so i'm going to finish this by crumbling over some feta cheese to be honest i usually prefer goat cheese but this time i did go with feta cheese which is very wonderful and then besides the cheese i'm also going to give it a little drizzle of extra virgin olive oil it's going to add just a little bit more richness and flavor and also freak out my guess because it looks like raw egg yolk and then last but not least a little bit of fresh herb i'm going to go with italian parsley although i believe cilantro is probably more traditional and that's it as soon as you think your eggs are perfect your shakshuka is done so let's go ahead and serve this up while it's still nice and hot so i usually recommend putting some sauce down in the bowl first and then topping it with an egg and then possibly more sauce then of course we'll finish that with the mandatory slice of toast i mean otherwise what are you going to sop up all that goodness with you got to have some toast and then my final touch was a few more drops of olive oil and yes that was mostly for the pictures and once i'd taken a few of those it was time to dig right in and you'll notice that even though those eggs were pretty soft when we pulled it off the stove because that mixture underneath is so hot by the time you serve this up it should be perfect and as i mentioned i do like my yolk a little runny so this was just perfect for me other people like to cook this all the way through which is fine who am i to judge your eggs but this is exactly how i like mine and that is just extraordinarily delicious that beautifully aromatic spicy sauce just an amazing thing to poach those eggs in and while admittedly not maybe the most beautiful thing to watch someone eat this is just so delicious so hearty so satisfying so comforting it's just no surprise at all became such a popular dish in that part of the world just a fantastic thing to eat whether it's for breakfast lunch or dinner in fact there's an old tunisian saying that basically roughly translates to any time is check shook a time and i could not agree more so i really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 3,763,949

Keywords: Shakshouka (Food), Egg (Food), Poached Egg (Food), Food (TV Genre), Hot Sauce (Food), Spice (Food), Recipe, chef, john, Cooking, foodwishes, Kitchen, Restaurant, Recipes, Breakfast (Type Of Dish), Brunch (Event), dinner, Shakshuka, Vegetarian Food (Cuisine)

Id: ifWWRZSWS18

Length: 8min 13sec (493 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/liz91]

I love food wishes! He makes it so easily!

[u/AL-Taiar]

Whenever you serve this north african dish

Thanks chef John , at least you are real

also

come for the cooking

stay for the puns and references