🔗 Share this article

Consider this: the best baked eggs don’t ever hit the oven. Through culinary experiments, realizing that using a cover produces a humid atmosphere for cooking the egg tops, delivering a gently cooked soft-cooked egg featuring set whites and flowing center. Direct oven heat of the oven is much more aggressive than steam, typically causing making dishes dry and harden the yolk. Here are two sauce options as a jumping-off point, though feel free to experiment. The first features an easy golden coconut sauce, and the second offers a merguez ragu reimagines eggs in purgatory, or simply put, eggs cooked in zesty tomato base.

Golden Coconut Sauce Baked Eggs (pictured above)

Prep 10 minutes
Cook Just under an hour
Yields Two people

Olive oil
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
Fine sea salt
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
Fresh ginger root, grated ginger
Golden spice
Cumin seeds
Curry leaves
Coconut milk
Canned chickpeas
Fresh basil, plus extra to serve
4 eggs
Green chilies, thinly cut, as garnish

Set a 25cm heavy cast-iron pot over medium-high flame. Add a shot of olive oil, add the chopped onion seasoned with salt, sauté for several minutes. Mix in garlic, ginger, and spices, let them sizzle, mixing now and then for three to four minutes, then tip in the coconut milk along with chickpeas and liquid. Bring to a boil, lower heat to gentle cook, allow to cook slowly for half an hour, until thickened and deep yellow in colour. Adjust seasoning, mix in fresh basil.

With a spoon’s back to create four little pockets in the sauce, add eggs individually. Season eggs with salt, place a lid on the pan, gently heat for a few minutes, until the whites are set with yolks still runny. Remove from heat, garnish with more basil and sliced chilies, ready to enjoy.

Spicy Sausage Sauce and Pickled Peppers Steamed Eggs

Prep 10 minutes
Cook 45 minutes
Yields Two

Olive oil
Spicy lamb sausages
Spicy paste
Cumin seeds
2 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
400g good-quality tinned tomatoes
Salt
Four eggs
Pickled peppers, coarsely cut
1 small handful fresh flat-leaf parsley, minced
3 tbsp thick Greek yoghurt
1 lemon, wedge-cut, for serving

Set a 25cm heavy cast-iron pot over medium flame. Pour in oil when heated, remove the skins from the sausages and break off pieces of the meat into the pan, almost like little meatballs. Reduce heat, brown the meat slowly, releasing flavorful oils. Stir merguez while cooking, so they colour on all sides.

After browning, incorporate harissa, cumin, and garlic into the skillet, turn up the heat to medium sauté while stirring, for three to four minutes, until the mix smells fragrant, with garlic cooked. Pour in tomato contents, salt to taste and bring to a simmer. Turn down the heat to low and leave to blip away for twenty minutes. Sauce will thicken, intensify in color, while the oils split and rise to the top.

Use the back of a spoon making indentations across base, add eggs individually. Season eggs with salt, cover skillet. Heat for minutes on low flame, until the whites are set and the yolks just warm.

Take off the heat, garnish with peppers, herbs, yogurt dollop, and oil splash, with lemon on side.