Menemen made up of eggs, peppers, tomatoes, and at times onions is a popular Turkish breakfast item. To create this lip-smacking Turkish style scrambled egg, you will need to spend only 20-25 minutes.
Though you can have it all year round. But it is pleasing especially in the summer, with ripe tomatoes from the farmer’s market or garden. The best part about this dish? Well, you can be creative while making this dish. You can add Aleppo pepper, fresh herbs, chiles, or shallots, or make it as purists always do, with eggs and tomatoes only. Cook slowly, stir intermittently, until the eggs create billowy puffs. Menemen can be topped with lamb sausage or feta cheese and served with a warm flatbread.
• Cuisine: Middle Eastern
• Diet: Eggetarian
• Course: Breakfast
Ingredients and their proportions:
• Whole eggs 4
• Finely chopped ginger 1 inch
• Finely chopped garlic 4 cloves
• Finely chopped onion 1
• Tomato puree 1/2cup
• Blanched, skin peeled, and chopped tomatoes 2
• Finely chopped red bell pepper ½
• Finely chopped yellow bell pepper ½
• Dried oregano 1 teaspoon
• Paprika powder 2 teaspoons
• Ground black peppercorns 1 teaspoon
• Cumin powder 1 teaspoon
• Finely chopped chives 2 sprig
• Olive oil to cook
• Salt as per taste
How you can make Menemen – Turkish style egg scramble:
To start making the Menemen recipe, you would have to chop all the ingredients listed above and keep everything ready.
Take a pan and blanch the tomatoes in it with hot water. You need to blanch it for just 30 seconds or so until the skin of your tomatoes starts open.
Drain the water then. Wash your tomatoes under running cold water for making it cool down a bit. Time for peeling off the skin. Now chop the blanched tomatoes into tiny pieces. Keep it aside.
After that, over medium flame, heat a pan. Add some olive oil to it. Once the oil gets hot, add garlic and ginger. Sauté them nicely until they get softened.
Time to add chopped onions. Keep sauteing until your onions have become light brown. Now you have to add red and yellow bell peppers. Sauté everything well until they are a bit crunchy.
You can add your blanched tomatoes once your bell peppers become crunchy enough. And sauté everything for about 2 minutes.
At this moment, you can add tomato puree too alongside the spices like oregano, cumin powder, salt, pepper powder, and paprika powder.
Give it a nice mix and cook on low flame until your tomatoes are cooked well. Now break the eggs.
You should not disturb the eggs at least for a few seconds. After a few minutes, move the eggs lightly with the help of a spatula and allow the eggs to mix with the tomato mixture. One can also move the pan around. Thus, cook the eggs over a low flame until they are cooked and soft.
Once your Turkish Menemen is done, then you can serve it by sprinkling chopped chives on top of it.
Serve this wonderful scrambled egg with some fresh fruits, Focaccia bread, and coffee.
Last Updated on September 1, 2021
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