Vegetarian Dishes
Shakshuka
Eggs poached in a thick, spiced sauce of tomatoes, red pepper and onion with garlic, cumin and paprika, finished with crumbled feta and fresh herbs and eaten straight from the pan with bread.
- Serves 4
- Hands-on 15 min
- Cook 30 min
- One pan
- Brunch, lunch or supper
- North African / Middle Eastern
Method
Heat the oil (2 tbsp) in a large, deep frying pan (about 28 cm) with a lid. Add the onion (1 onion) and peppers (2) with a pinch of salt and cook over a medium heat for 10 minutes, until soft and starting to colour.
Add the garlic (3 cloves), cumin (1 tsp), paprika (1 tsp) and chilli (pinch) and cook for 1 minute, until fragrant.
Add the tomatoes (800 g) and sugar (1 tsp), season and simmer for 10–15 minutes, stirring now and then, until thick enough to hold a hollow when you drag a spoon through it.
Make 6 hollows in the sauce with the back of a spoon and crack an egg (6 eggs) into each. Season the eggs, cover the pan and cook over a low heat for 6–8 minutes, until the whites are set but the yolks are still runny.
Scatter over the feta (60 g) and coriander (a little) and serve from the pan with bread (200 g) for mopping up.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
Rate this recipe
Tried it? Rate it.
The readers’ average appears here once 5 readers have rated it.
One vote per recipe per browser, and you can change it. We keep only the stars: no name, e-mail or IP address. How ratings work
See also
Chef’s notes
- If the sauce is too thin the eggs sink and spread; simmer it until really thick before adding them.
- Covering the pan sets the tops of the whites with steam. Take the lid off as soon as they are opaque.
- Add a handful of spinach with the tomatoes for a green version, or a little chorizo or merguez with the onions for a meaty one.
From the Maghreb to the brunch menu
Shakshouka (also spelled shakshuka) is a dish of eggs poached in a sauce of tomatoes, peppers, onion and garlic, eaten across North Africa and the Middle East. Its name comes from Maghrebi Arabic, where it means “mixture”, and it is commonly spiced with cumin, paprika and cayenne.
The food writer Gil Marks suggested it grew from the Ottoman şakşuka; other scholars see it as one of a wider family of western Mediterranean vegetable stews that includes the Turkish menemen, the Basque piperade and ratatouille. Maghrebi Jews brought it to Israel in the 1950s, where it was widely adopted and began appearing in restaurants in the 1990s. Because it is an egg dish, English-speaking countries usually put it on the breakfast or brunch menu.
Sources for these notes
For the history above.
How this recipe was developed
We compared the two most-rated shakshuka recipes on Allrecipes (Ben’s and Chef John’s) with Lulu Grimes’s shakshuka on BBC Good Food.
- Peppers and onion first. Allrecipes’ Shakshuka (4.8/5 from 418 ratings) softens onion and peppers in olive oil before the spices; we do the same.
- Cumin and paprika. Both Allrecipes versions use cumin and paprika, with cayenne or a fresh chilli for heat; we use chilli flakes or harissa.
- Thick sauce, lid on. We simmer the sauce until thick and cover the pan so the whites set before the yolks harden.
- Feta and herbs. Chef John (4.8/5 from 295 ratings) finishes with feta and parsley; BBC Good Food (4.6/5 from 157 ratings) uses fresh coriander.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 1 November 2026):
- Allrecipes (Ben): Shakshuka (4.8/5, 418 ratings)
- Allrecipes (John Mitzewich (Chef John)): Chef John’s Shakshuka (4.8/5, 295 ratings)
- BBC Good Food (Lulu Grimes): Shakshuka (4.6/5, 157 ratings)
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.