Menemen (Turkish scrambled eggs with tomatoes and peppers)
28 min · 18 g protein · 256 cals / serving
Turkey's favourite breakfast pan: sweet green peppers and ripe tomatoes cooked down in olive oil into a juicy, jammy sauce, then eggs stirred through it into big, soft, saucy curds, finished with a little crumbled feta, Aleppo-style pepper flakes and parsley. Brought to the table in the pan, with crusty bread for dragging through the juices.
Ingredients
- 2 tsp olive oil
- 3 long green peppers or 2 green bell peppers bell peppers, Turkish çarliston, cubanelle or green bell, thinly sliced
- 1/2 medium onion, finely chopped (optional, see tips)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 5 ripe medium tomatoes, grated on a box grater, skins discarded, or finely chopped
- 1/2 tbsp tomato paste, or Turkish pepper paste
- 1 tsp red pepper flakes, Aleppo-style or pul biber if you have it
- 4 large eggs
- 2/3 cup liquid egg white, or the whites of 5 eggs
- a few grinds black pepper
- 1/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled
- a small handful fresh parsley, chopped
Steps
- Heat the oil in a wide frying pan (ideally one you can take to the table) over medium heat. Add the peppers, onion if using and the salt, and cook, stirring now and then, until soft and just starting to colour, 6–7 minutes.
- Add the grated tomatoes, tomato paste and pepper flakes and simmer, stirring occasionally, until most of the liquid has cooked off and the sauce is thick and jammy but still juicy, 6–8 minutes.
- Beat the eggs and egg whites lightly with the black pepper. Turn the heat to low, pour the eggs into the pan and leave them for 30 seconds, then stir slowly in big folds, just a few times, until they have set into soft, saucy curds streaked with red, 2–3 minutes. Take off the heat while they still look a little wet; they finish in the hot pan (160°F if you like them fully set).
- Scatter over the feta and parsley and serve straight from the pan, with bread on the side.
Good to know
Onions or no onions?
The great Turkish breakfast argument: half the country says menemen never has onion, the other half would not make it without. Both are right; leave it out for the sweeter, purer tomato-and-pepper version, at about the same score.
Out-of-season tomatoes?
Use 1 1/2 cans (14 oz each) of good chopped tomatoes, about 600 g in all, and simmer a few minutes longer, until thick.
Why some egg whites?
They stretch four eggs into a generous pan for three without anyone noticing: the yolks still colour and enrich the curds. Six whole eggs is the classic and works just as well, at about 65 instead of 72.
What goes with it?
In Turkey: crusty bread or simit to mop up the juices, black olives, cucumber and sweet black tea. A thick slice of sourdough per person is all you need.
Alternative
Per
- Calories
- 68
- Protein
- (30%)
- 5 g
- Fat
- (45%)
- 3 g
- Carbohydrates
- (26%)
- 5 g
- of which sugar
- 3 g
- Fiber
- 1 g
- Sodium
- 176 mg
More breakfast
Computed from the ingredients with our published formula, not yet kitchen-tested. How
As written, 767 kcal goes into the pot and 1381 g of ingredients comes out as about 1130 g of food: 68 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water and energy density is the score's biggest lever, so the dish is scored as cooked, not as an average of its parts. Every ingredient links to its food page, with the same data and score. The label's percentages are each macronutrient's share of the calories. The full formula.