Menemen
Menemen is not eggs with vegetables but vegetables with eggs, and the order is not accidental. Onion and pepper stew in a generous amount of olive oil for ten to fifteen minutes — slowly, to complete softness, without browning. Then the tomatoes go in, and only at the end the eggs, which simply bind it all together. Finished menemen stays wet: you do not slice it, you mop it up with bread.
- Prep
- 10 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Total
- 35 min
- Servings
- 3
- Level
- Easy
- Per serving
- 280 kcal
Ingredients
Makes: One 24 cm pan, 3 servings
Shopping list
The ingredients for the servings you chose — copy them or send them to a messenger. Tick what you already have at home: only the rest goes on the list.
Method
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Step 1: Be generous with the oil
Heat the olive oil in a 24 cm pan over medium-low. Five tablespoons looks excessive, but the oil is what makes menemen menemen — this is not the dish to cut it in.
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Step 2: Stew onion and pepper
Add the onion and peppers and stew 10–15 minutes, stirring often. They must go completely soft without browning — the colour stays pale.
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Step 3: Add the tomatoes
Add the skinned tomatoes and cook another 5–10 minutes, until most of the juice has gone. The mixture should be thick rather than liquid, or the eggs float in it.
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Step 4: Season now
Salt and pepper it at this point, before the eggs. Once the eggs set, salt no longer distributes evenly.
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Step 5: Break in the eggs
Drop the heat low and crack the eggs straight into the pan. Let them sit 30 seconds, then start stirring slowly with a spatula.
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Step 6: Stir slowly
Stir with large unhurried movements for 2–3 minutes. The eggs should stay soft and wet in big tender curds, not worked into a uniform mass.
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Step 7: Take it off wet
Take the pan off while the eggs still look slightly underdone; they finish in half a minute in the hot pan. Scatter parsley and feta and serve with bread.
Tips & variations
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Tip
In winter use tinned tomatoes in juice — better than pale out-of-season fresh ones. Drain them, or you will be evaporating juice for a long time.
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Variation
Add 100 g of sliced sujuk or spicy sausage with the onion: the most common Turkish version.
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Tip
Use mild, thin-skinned peppers. Bell peppers work but are sweeter and give a noticeably softer flavour.
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Storage
Menemen is not kept — reheated it goes dry and grainy. It is cooked for exactly the people already at the table.
Nutrition
| 1 serving | Whole dish 3 servings | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 280 kcal | 840 kcal |
| Protein | 14 g | 42 g |
| Fat | 21 g | 63 g |
| Carbohydrates | 9 g | 27 g |
Approximate values calculated from standard ingredient data.
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