If you are not familiar with shakshuka, I am thrilled to introduce the concept to you! Shakshuka is a North African dish that is now popular throughout the Middle East. This easy and healthy egg dish is vegetarian, gluten free, and incredibly delicious. Shakshuka is one of the first recipes I ever blogged about, and has become one of the most popular posts on my site—a simple vegetarian meal that works as a breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner or “brinner.”
The shakshuka concept is very simple. A dish of eggs soft cooked atop a bed of thick reduced spicy tomato sauce with peppers. In the maghreb, this chunky sauce is known as matbucha. Similar preparations are made throughout the world, including a popular Italian dish known as “eggs in purgatory.” Shakshuka is somewhat different than the Italian dish; it’s generally spicier, and has the addition of peppers.
Shakshuka is very popular in Israel, where it is often eaten for breakfast. I usually find myself serving it with a side salad as a light evening meal. It’s a versatile vegetarian one-skillet meal that is easy to make, healthy, and addicting.
In Israel, the most famous place to eat shakshuka is a restaurant known as Dr. Shakshuka.
The charm of Dr. Shakshuka is evident from the moment you enter. The restaurant is housed in an aging building in the old port city of Jaffa. It’s buzzing all day long with local patrons as well as tourists, everybody eager to taste the “Tripolitanian”-style cooking. The owner Bino Gabso was born to a Libyan family that immigrated to Israel in 1949. He’s been serving shakshuka and other north-African favorites to enthusiastic restaurant patrons in Jaffa for the past 18 years.
Old kerosene stoves hang from the rafters of the place, just like the moms and bubbes cooked with when Israel first became a country.
Dr. Shakshuka is known for its Libyan-style home cooking. It’s a kosher meat restaurant with many traditional tripolitanian-style dishes including couscous, chraime fish, and kosher merguez sausage.
Of course, they are best known for– what else?– shakshuka. I couldn’t very well visit Dr. Shakshuka without ordering their signature dish. For a twist, I ordered it with mushrooms.
The waitress served my shakshuka in a small, sizzling skillet, as is the custom with most of the local Israeli restaurants. Delicious! After you’ve eaten the eggs, it’s customary to scoop up the remaining sauce with a piece of fluffy white bread. The bread at Dr. Shakshuka has a light, spongy consistency making it ideal for this purpose.
Of course, if you’re watching your waistline, gluten intolerant, or serving for Passover, you can leave out the bread; the dish is also wonderful on its own.
I can’t very well write a blog about shakshuka without sharing my own recipe! This is a basic, simple shakshuka spiced just the way I like it. If you’re looking for variations on flavor, different ingredients can be added to the tomato base—jalapeños, green chilies, parsley, red pepper flakes, smoked paprika, additional vegetables or anything else that sounds tasty to you. I’ve even made it with a spinach/tomato base that turned out great. Use your imagination!
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Video by Entice Films
Shakshuka
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1/2 onion, peeled and diced
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
- 4 cups ripe diced tomatoes, or 2 cans (14 oz. each) diced tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 teaspoon mild chili powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- Pinch of cayenne pepper, or more to taste (careful, it's spicy!)
- Pinch of sugar (optional, to taste - omit for low carb)
- kosher salt and pepper, to taste
- 6 large eggs
- 1/2 tablespoon fresh chopped parsley or cilantro (optional, for garnish)
NOTES
Instructions
- Heat a deep, large skillet or sauté pan on medium. Slowly warm olive oil in the pan. Add chopped onion, sauté for a few minutes until the onion begins to soften. Add garlic and continue to sauté till mixture is fragrant.
- Add the diced bell pepper, sauté for 5-7 minutes over medium until softened.
- Add tomatoes and tomato paste to pan, stir until blended. Add spices and sugar, stir, and allow mixture to simmer over medium heat for 5-7 minutes until it starts to reduce. At this point, you can taste the mixture and spice it according to your preferences. Add salt and pepper to taste, more sugar for a sweeter sauce, or more cayenne pepper for a spicier shakshuka (be careful with the cayenne... it is extremely spicy!).
- Crack the eggs, one at a time, directly over the tomato mixture, making sure to space them evenly over the sauce. I usually place 5 eggs around the outer edge and 1 in the center. The eggs will cook "over easy" style on top of the tomato sauce.
- Cover the pan with a lid. Allow mixture to simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until the eggs are cooked and the sauce has slightly reduced. Keep an eye on the skillet to make sure that the sauce doesn't reduce too much, which can lead to burning.
- Some people prefer their shakshuka with more runny yolks. If this is your preference, let the sauce reduce for a few minutes before cracking the eggs on top-- then, cover the pan and cook the eggs to taste, making sure the egg whites are set before serving. Garnish with the chopped parsley or cilantro, if desired. A sprinkle of feta cheese on top is also nice!
Janet Troughton says
Simple and delicious
Gil says
Fantastic! Wife loved it. Can’t wait to make it for friends.
Question- are there any other spices you would recommend? Maybe Coriander?
Thank you!
Gil
Alphe says
Yummy! One of my favourite breakfasts on days when I don’t feel like eating my good old porridge.
Cheryl says
My husband and I have loved Shakshuka for years. We ate at Dr. Shakshuka in Jaffa, but that was just a few hours after landing in Tel Aviv after a nonstop from LA, and we were so jet lagged and exhausted that I don’t remember much about that first evening in Israel. Since then we’ve enjoyed Shakshuka at many of the great little Israeli restaurants in Los Angeles. I’ve threatened to try to make my own and this morning I woke up and said, “Today’s the day.”
Your recipe is so easy and so delicious, and this is an easy pantry meal. I used canned diced tomatoes, and jarred fire roasted red peppers because I didn’t have fresh. No tomato paste in my pantry, so I stirred in an 8 oz. can of tomato sauce and let it simmer and thicken a bit longer. My smoked paprika added a nice depth and instead of cayenne I tossed in the last mini container of hot chili sauce from a recent Thai takeout meal. Garnished with chopped Italian parsley and plunked the pan in the center of the table h ierved it with wam while wheat pita and hummus. SO GOOD! My husband and son loved it and I’m adding your recipe to my rotation. A great idea for Passover. Next time I’ll try serving the Shakshuka on a bed of hummus as one of our favorite Israeli restaurants does…super delicious scooped up with warm pita! Thanks, Tori!
Tori Avey says
So happy to hear you liked it Cheryl! It’s really a versatile and tasty dish.
S N Nagar says
Yesterday, during my first visit to Israel, my local friend took me for dinner and we had this fantastic dish called ‘Shakshuka’…. being a Vegetarian (rather a vegetarian turn into ‘Eggagetarian’), I enjoyed to terribly!!! I went very well with my ‘Indian’ taste and liking for spicy ‘Curries’….. Thanks for sharing this article of yours…. I will certainly try this at home, once back in India….. God bless you … Regards
Tori Avey says
Enjoy! 🙂
Anna says
Love this recipe! Just made it for my boyfriend who is a bit adverse to vegetarian dishes & who also doesn’t like tomatoes, BUT (!!!) no surprise, he absolutely loved it! Would definitely recommend this recipe to anyone, it’s quick, easy, healthy and seriously delicious.
Sudhir says
Thank you, thank you, thaaaaank youuuuuu, Tori. I loved reading this post. I’m gonna keep it in front of me, so I can read it while I’m following this recipe through. I’m planning to make it for my wife today (it’s Egg Sunday for us). Have a shakshukin (which means awesome in my language), day.
Kavita says
I love shakshuka and have eaten it in many restaurants in Dubai. I have always wanted to try it at home and was looking for an easy recipe to follow. I finally found one. It really turned out well and my family and I enjoyed it. Thank you for the recipe.
Grace says
Thanks for providing this recipe! I’ve always wanted to try Shakshuka!
Whenever I try a new recipe I follow it exactly to see if/what I’d want to tweak in the future. This was a delicious foundation to build on!
While it’s not complex in flavor (though that of course is subjective), my husband and I enjoyed it. I’ll experiment from here on out using this recipe as a base. From what I hear that’s the heart of Shakshuka anyway!
For this one, I adjusted the way I served it to stretch this for further meals. Served over a rice/quinoa blend and some diced avocado. I also threw some cilantro on top which brightened up the dish a bit.
Tip: add the tomato paste shortly after the peppers begin softening and allow the mixture to darken a shade before stirring in the canned tomatoes. Stir constantly to prevent it from burning. The darkened tomato paste brings more depth to the overall flavors — do the same whenever you make red (marinara) sauce!
Also, the I cut the cook time for eggs in half and they were still well done, so I’ll probably just eyeball that step in the future.
But overall, satisfying and tasty!!
Steven Teater says
Thank you for publishing this recipe. Absolutely unique and delicious. I truly appreciate your version and style of interpreting your personal experiences and insight into recipes that are staples in one destination and completely unknown in most others. Your website is easy to navigate and interface. Please keep up the excellence.
Best Regards,
Steve Teater
jo says
Looks great. I will try it tonight as part of a 5:2 low cal diet.
How many eggs per serving did you assume when calculating the nutritional values?
Thanks
Jo
Tori Avey says
1 egg each.
Phos Fourdots says
>>>“…he and the other soldiers would sneak into the barracks kitchen late at night and cook shakshuka using whatever they could find in the pantries. It’s a vegetarian one-skillet meal that is easy to make, very healthy, and totally addicting.”<<<
Since I first learned of shakshuka, maybe in 2014, I've made in a dozen different ways.
I maintain the basic concepts, but really, this can be improvised almost any way you want, with whatever you have on hand. Late-night sneaky soldiers, and anyone else who knows their way around a few kitchen techniques can have a lot of fun making it up as they go along.
And, for my tastes, it doesn't have to be vegetarian. First time I tried it with meat—I used the leftovers from a big batch of N.Y.C.-style cheesesteak I'd griddled up the night before…slivered ribeye, onions, bell & hot peppers, garlic, celery seed powder, oregano, with a generous pile of mozzarella.
Next day, I started by chopping even further the ’fridge congealed steak mixture, sautéeing that with EVOO & butter with even more fresh chopped onions. Then I added the spicy marinara I'd made.
Eggs on top. Lid on; halfway through, scrape some Parm Regg off the wedge, through a little white wine around the edges of the pan. Return the lid and finish the eggs.
I like to spoon on some sour cream or creme fraiche when I plate up, garnish with chives or scallion greens.
Seriously, readers….learn the basic technique, then make it however you might enjoy it.
Sheila Wells says
Shakshuka
Can this be made ahead of time, except for the eggs to be added right before serving time?
Thank you, sheila
Tori Avey says
Hi Sheila– yes, absolutely. Keep sauce refrigerated until ready to use. Just be sure to leave enough time for reheating the sauce, and for the eggs to cook to desired doneness.
Morgan says
Was looking for a breakfast recipe to use my rather abundant amount of garden tomatoes… this was great! I used aleppo in place of chili powder and pepper flakes. Added some cotija cheese on top, DELICIOUS!
Rob says
A chef I follow on Instagram recently posted an absolutely beautiful photo of that morning’s shakshuka. It looked so delicious, but I’d never heard of it. What’s shakshuka??? So I googled and checked out a few recipes. I made yours this morning and it was absolutely delicious! I eat a lot of eggs and I’m so excited to have such a delicious (and easy!) new way to prepare them. I’m looking forward to experimenting with spices and other ingredients. Thanks so much for sharing your recipe!
Tori Avey says
Welcome to the shakshuka fan club! 🙂
Connie says
My mother used to make this for dinner with leftover sauce from Sunday macaroni sauce and added some fresh peas. Great budget meal. So good. I have made it many times without the pepper but I will try it next time.
Bryan Forrest says
Tori. I had been wanting this dish for a long time and luckily it was on a menu in Kuwait City 8 months ago. It was just what I had hoped. I have had your recipe bookmarked since my return to Louisiana in January. I was afraid to try it myself for fear of disappointment. I followed your recipe and wow, it was really delicious. I am so happy now haha. I added a little extra cayenne and it was almost too much. I use a good bit of that in my gumbo. Thanks for the story and recipe. I’ll check out some of your other recipes.
Tori Avey says
Glad you liked it Bryan! 🙂 Welcome to the site.
Matthias says
I cooked this recipe when I was in Tel aviv. The spices I got from ha carmel were so much more potent – it was a great experience!
I use Shakshuka regularly now to impress people. Quite successfully so!
Nazeera says
Shalom Tory
I was so thrilled to try out your recipe. My husband had been bugging me for a couple of years to try it out, but the number of eggs required kindof put me off though i knew id love it. This year i decided not to put it off and found your recipe while googling. Seeing your Jewish version was rather thrilling, knowing it’s going to be authentic unlike the local types we get here which are very sweet (yuck!!). With the blessings of the Almighty, the result was fantastic as my husband and i had it for our break fast meal this holy month of Ramadhan.
Thanks, Tory, I’m going to try out more of your Jewish recipes. Food ALWAYS brings people together!
Tori Avey says
Shalom Nazeera, glad you enjoyed. Ramadan Mubarak! 🙂
Lisa says
I love this ❤️
Jaime Alalu says
My 4 grandparents came from Istanbul..they moved to Peru in 1917.I remember my grandmother’s shashuka,she did not make it with peppers,hers also had slices of Kashkaval cheese,it was delicious!
I moved from Peru to Florida 45 yrs ago,I still make it..great breakfast on weekends.
Jaime Alalu
Kristen says
I made this for a brunch with friends and it was so good! I used Aleppo pepper instead of cayenne, which was flavorful and gave it a little heat but not too much.