Shakshuka Recipe (Chorizo and Feta)

🇨🇦 Salted herbs, the ingredient nobody puts in here

This is my idea and I stand by it. One tablespoon of Quebec salted herbs in the sauce, along with the tomatoes. It is an old Quebec condiment: herbs and vegetables chopped fine and preserved in coarse salt, roughly one third salt to two thirds vegetables, left to macerate for weeks. Celery, onion, carrot, parsnip, savory, chives, parsley. It comes from settlers along the lower St. Lawrence who needed to keep their aromatics through winter. And it goes with tomato sauce like the two were invented together.

🧂 Three sources of salt in one pan, taste first

This is the real trap in this recipe and nobody mentions it because nobody has all three. Dry chorizo is salty, salted herbs are literally preserved in salt, and the feta arrives salted on top of all that. Do not salt at the start. At step 4, once the sauce is built, you taste, and only then do you adjust. I like things well salted, but I want to decide that knowingly.

🌭 Dry Spanish chorizo, not the fresh kind

Both are called chorizo and they are two different products. Dry Spanish chorizo is fermented and ready to eat, loaded with paprika: sliced into coins it releases an orange oil that perfumes the whole sauce, and it keeps its chew right through service. Fresh chorizo, the Mexican-style kind sold soft in a casing, crumbles instead of slicing, releases far more liquid fat and has to cook through. If a recipe says “sliced,” it means dry. I buy mine at the regular grocery store, nothing complicated.

🍅 Diced tomatoes, and above all do not over-reduce

Canned diced tomatoes hold their cubes instead of melting, which gives you a rustic sauce with chunks that cling to the spoon, and wells that hold their shape better. The trade-off is that it does not thicken on its own the way crushed tomatoes do. The instinct is to reduce it hard to thicken it. Do not. An over-reduced sauce turns pasty and the eggs have nowhere to sit. Fifteen minutes covered is right.

🥚 Four to five minutes, and watch them

I tested at five minutes and got two perfectly runny yolks and two slightly firmer ones. The difference comes down to where the egg sits in the pan and how big it is. So aim for four to five, and judge by eye: the whites should be opaque throughout, with no gelatinous zone around the yolk, and the yolks should still wobble when you shake the pan. A lid, a large plate or foil all work the same. The lid cooks the top of the white with steam.

🧀 Feta, off the heat, always

Block feta in brine, crumbled by hand. Pre-crumbled feta is drier and it does not soften the same way against a hot pan. And it goes on at the very end, with the burner off: it stays creamy and slightly cool against the hot sauce, and that contrast is half the dish. Cooked with everything else, it dries out and releases its salt into a sauce that did not need any.

🍞 Toasted bread, and not just any bread

Mine is Belgian sourdough, toasted. The sourness of the levain works with the tomato, and a thick slice holds up in a sauce this generous. And if you want to go all the way: serve it with my homemade focaccia with olives and rosemary. Focaccia in a shakshuka is ridiculous.

📅 Make-ahead

This is the perfect dish for it, but you have to know what to prepare. The sauce goes ahead, all the way through step 6, spinach included. It keeps two days in the fridge and it freezes very well. On the day, you reheat it gently in the pan and crack fresh eggs into it. What never goes ahead: the eggs. A fully assembled shakshuka that gets reheated finishes cooking the yolks and you lose exactly what makes the dish. You can also cut the onion, the peppers and the chorizo the night before and keep them in labeled containers. In the morning all that is left is the pan.

✅ What to serve with my shakshuka

Bread, and that is all you need. The pan goes straight onto the table and people help themselves. It is a brunch first, but I would have no hesitation serving it on a weeknight to friends with a glass of wine. If you want more egg dishes, my scrambled eggs with mushrooms and Boursin play the creamy card, and my egg and maple bacon croque madame is the other great brunch in this house.