Spiced Tomato and Pepper Skillet Eggs
Eggs set over a warm, toasty tomato and red pepper sauce, finished with crumbled feta and fresh parsley. A comforting one-pan dinner with soft pita for scooping.
- Total
- 30 min
- Prep 10 · Cook 20
- Serves
- 1
- Difficulty
- Easy
You'll practice: Sweating · Blooming spices
- Standard
- Savory
- Oriental
- Comforting
- Mild
- One pan
Instructions
-
Dice the onion and red bell pepper into 1 cm pieces. Mince the garlic. Drain the canned whole tomatoes, then crush them by hand into rough chunks. Chop the fresh parsley.
~8 min
-
Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and red bell pepper with 0.25 tsp salt and cook, stirring, until softened and lightly golden, about 6 minutes.
~6 min
Sweating the vegetables with salt draws out moisture and concentrates their sweetness before the sauce is built.
Sweating Cook onions and peppers with salt over medium heat until soft and lightly golden, not browned; too-high heat browns them before they soften.
-
Add the garlic, ground cumin, and smoked paprika to the skillet. Stir constantly for 45 seconds until fragrant and darkened slightly, taking care not to burn the garlic.
~1 min
Blooming the spices in hot oil dissolves their fat-soluble flavor compounds, making the sauce taste deeper and more aromatic.
Toasting the ground cumin and smoked paprika in the hot oil for under a minute blooms their oils and gives the sauce a deeper, warmer flavor than adding them with the tomatoes.
Blooming spices Stir ground spices in hot oil for under a minute until fragrant; pull them off the heat the moment they darken, or they turn bitter.
-
Add the crushed canned whole tomatoes, the remaining 0.25 tsp salt, and 0.25 tsp black pepper. Simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens and a spoon leaves a trail, about 8 minutes.
~8 min
Simmering uncovered evaporates water so the sauce thickens enough to cradle the eggs without turning watery.
-
Make 4 shallow wells in the sauce with the back of a spoon. Crack one egg into each well. Cover the skillet and cook over low heat until the whites are set and the yolks are still soft, 5 to 6 minutes.
~6 min
Covering traps steam that sets the egg whites gently while the yolks stay soft and runny.
If your skillet runs dry before the eggs are set, spoon a little of the sauce from the edges over the whites rather than adding water, which would thin the sauce.
-
Scatter the crumbled feta and chopped fresh parsley over the eggs. Serve straight from the skillet with the pita breads for scooping.
~1 min