World's Best Breakfast Recipe - Shakshuka AKA Tomato Eggs

Did you know that shakshuka means the best, most delicious eggs in the entire world? Literal translation. Okay, maybe not. But what I do know is that shakshuka is an amazingly delicious, super easy, healthy egg dish that you can make for a brunch. You can make it for breakfast. You can make it for lunch. You can even make it for supper. And it is super hearty, full of flavor. And it is sure to please a crowd. So stick around and I'm going to show you how to make this bad boy. So first thing we're going to do is chop up our tomatoes really simply. You're going to want about five large tomatoes for three people. All we're going to do is really simply chop the tomato in half. Remove these upper parts. We don't want those. Really simply like that. Get rid of those. And all we want to do is give it a really, really rough chop. Don't be too fussy with it. Nice big chunks will work just fine. You can cut it in half. And then you can just sort of cut it into these large cubes like so. Set that aside. Just chop up all your tomatoes. This is really good even if you have some older tomatoes. Some really bruised ones that aren't so pretty anymore. You want to use them all up. And it's perfect right now because it's the end of tomato season. So you've got all these leftover tomatoes that you can just check into your shakshuka. Some people like to remove the skin first of the tomato. I find that you don't really need to. I mean the tomato is going to cook down and you're not really going to taste it anyways. If you want to, you could very simply boil the tomatoes in a little pot of boiling water for about a minute. And then you just remove them and you can peel the skin right off that way. But I like to keep them on because it's just much faster. Good. I'd say that's actually plenty of tomato right there. You're going to want about a full onion for this recipe. You just remove the skin like so. You're going to chop it right down the middle. And then we're just going to remove all this outer skin. Don't throw out these skins. Put them in a freezer bag. Throw them in the freezer. You can save them for a stock when you make later on. So with the onions, we're just going to give it a really quick dice. Again, we're going to cook this down quite a bit. So you don't have to be too fussy. It doesn't have to be perfect. Really quick dice. I'm going to set that aside. Now we're going to want some garlic. Lots of garlic. You're going to need three to four cloves. I like to use a lot. I use, I think, five cloves of garlic today. I like a lot of garlic. You like less garlic, use less garlic. What you do is smash the garlic really quickly. Oh god, it's making me cry. Oh, the onions. Oh god. When you smash them, the skin just peels right off. Oh god, my eyes are watering. These onions. I love shakshuka so much. Make you cry. Very quickly. Smash it. Good. Put that in with your onions. That, ladies and gentlemen, is all we're going to need for our shakshuka. Let's go over to the pan. I'm going to use a cast iron pan for this. A really heavy bottom pan. It retains the heat really nicely, evenly throughout. You could use a nonstick skillet. You could use a dutch oven. You could use whatever you want for this. But I like to make it in a cast iron pan. I'm going to set our heat to about a medium high. And now we go in with a healthy amount of olive oil. This is going to be like our sauce. So don't be afraid to use a nice good amount of olive oil. We're going to go straight in with our onions and the garlic together. Put the garlic with the onions because garlic has a tendency to burn. But when you mix it in with the onions, it sort of cools down the pan a little bit more and doesn't burn as quickly. So in we go with the onions and garlic. I'm just going to give that a stir. Spread it throughout the pan. And immediately all the beautiful aromas, perfume from the garlic and the onions starts to hit the air. And your kitchen smells amazing. We're going to hit them with a little pinch of salt just to sort of speed up that cooking process just a little bit. You season as you go. Give that a little stir. Smells so good. The great thing about this cast iron skillet is that it's super nonstick. Nothing will stick to the bottom of this pan. We're going to sweat these down for about five to ten minutes. Depending on the heat, we want to keep it at a medium low now just so we don't burn the onions or the garlic. All right, so now our onions and our garlic are nice and translucent. We've even got a little bit of color, but hey, I'm human. And that's probably going to add a little bit more flavor to the dish. So now, before we go in with our tomatoes, we want to hit it with some smoked paprika. This is one of our secret ingredients. The second secret ingredient is coming up. We're going to toast it really quickly with the onions and the garlic in the oil. If you were to put this after the tomatoes, you would steam it and it wouldn't be as good. You wouldn't get all those essential oils out of the paprika. This sort of toasts the spice really nicely. And we're going to put in about a teaspoon because it's really strong stuff. But this smokiness is going to add such a beautiful, beautiful depth of flavor to this dish. Give that a quick stir. We don't want to cook the smoked paprika too long. Otherwise, it'll burn. All we want to do is just toast it nicely in the onions and it smells glorious in this kitchen. Beautiful. Next, we go in with our tomatoes. You could use tinned tomatoes out of a can if you like. But because it's the end of tomato season, I want to use all these beautiful, gorgeous field tomatoes, organically grown, fresh from the garden. I'm just going to toss the onions with the tomatoes and this is all going to get cooked down to a beautiful, beautiful puree. We're going to hit it with a little bit of salt and some freshly cracked black pepper. Going to make a lovely tomato sauce for our shakshuka. Many different recipes call for different ingredients in shakshuka. You can make it with diced peppers. You can make it with carrots if you want for sweetness. I like to keep shakshuka really simple. Star ingredients of the shakshuka are the tomatoes and the eggs. And all I want to do is highlight those flavors. Nothing more. Does this look good? That's what I'm talking about. Wait till you see it finished. Now that these flavors are all coming together, what I want to do is I want to keep all that steam inside. I want to cook the tomatoes a little bit quicker. So I'm just going to hit it with a lid. Drop the heat to a medium low and continue to stir occasionally to prevent burning on the bottom of the pan. So check it out. Our beautiful tomatoes have been stewing away for about 10 to 15 minutes now. And now when it's reaching this texture, you see this sort of like clumpy, chunky texture. This is what we want. I don't want it to be completely dissolved because I think it's rather nice when you bite into a beautiful egg and you've got that beautiful juiciness of the tomato alongside it. So it's almost ready here. Not quite because we need to put in our final secret ingredient. Let me introduce you to the amazing, incredible harissa. Harissa is a Tunisian chili blend. It's almost like a chili sauce. And the greatest thing about this delicious chili paste, my friends, is that it is paleo. You can pick this up at any of your local Middle Eastern grocery stores. Some regular grocery stores might even carry it now too. It is extremely spicy. It packs a punch. So use it at your own discretion. I quite like it spicy. So I'm going to go in with about a full teaspoon of this bad boy right in. Let's put in a little bit more. Teaspoon and a quarter. And now what we want to do is we just want to stir this amazing harissa throughout our tomato sauce and incorporate it all the way through. And it's such a beautiful dish with this red, creamy tomato sauce. And it's going to be so amazing when we put our eggs right into this. And at this point, I want to taste it for seasonings. I want to see if I need a little bit more salt, a little bit more cracked pepper, if I want it a little bit spicier. So we're just going to give it a little taste. I think it needs a little bit more salt. Just a pinch. That's going to help bring out all those flavors that we just put in there. Now what we want to do is we want to crack our eggs right into the shakshuka. What I like to do is with one hand, I like to make a little pocket with the spoon and crack an egg right in there. Like so. Perfect. Now we're just going to keep going around the edge of the pan and cracking our eggs right in there. Don't touch it. Don't stir it. Don't scramble it. Just let the eggs do their thing. It's ready. We've let it beautifully poach in that rich, delicious tomato sauce that we've made. The eggs are perfectly cooked. And now the way I like to finish it off is I take some beautiful olives. I'm just going to give these a nice quick rough chop. Spread these throughout our shakshuka. Really rustic. And I like to just spread them over top. And then finally, you take some fresh cilantro, coriander. You could use parsley. You could use dill. You could use tarragon. Any fresh herb will do, but I love this with cilantro. Give it a nice rough chop. And this is just going to go right over top of our shakshuka. And the absolute best part about this dish, it's all made in a single pan. Clean up's a breeze. The way I like to serve it, just really, really simply on its own. I mean, this does not need anything. If you weren't paleo, you would eat it with a slice of bread. But we don't need any of that. And trust me, it's only going to take away from these delicious flavors. So I'm just going to spoon in one of those eggs. And I like to cook it just until the whites are cooked, but leaving those yolks runny. Serve it with a spoon. And watch this. I'm just going to beautifully open up those eggs. Beautiful runny yolk. Perfectly cooked. Now we must taste it, my friends. I want a little bit of olive as well. Oh, it's hot. Smells so good. Oh my god. I'm in heaven. The egg yolk that just breaks into the tomato sauce makes it so creamy and rich. And the tomato sauce is spicy and salty. And all the cilantro brings it so much freshness. Oh my god. That's fantastic. Make this for your friends. Make it for your family. And unleash your primal gourmet. If you like this video, give me a thumbs up. If you loved it, hit the subscribe button. Right, uh, where is it? Right here. That's where it is. Enjoy your day.