Menemen: Soft Turkish Eggs with Tomato and Pepper

Menemen is the Turkish breakfast that proves eggs do not need to be either fried or scrambled to death. Soft eggs are folded through a thick, jammy base of tomato and green pepper cooked down in olive oil, and the whole thing is kept deliberately loose and glossy so you can scoop it with bread. Cook it low, cook it slow, and stir it as little as your patience allows. The reward is silky curds suspended in a sweet, gently spiced tomato base, and a pan you will want to eat straight out of.

What menemen is, and what it isn’t

Turkish breakfast, kahvaltı, is a spread of cheeses, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, jams, honey, bread and eggs, and menemen is its warm centrepiece. The name is usually traced to the town of Menemen near İzmir on the Aegean coast, a region whose cooking leans hard on olive oil, tomatoes and long green peppers.

It helps to be clear about what menemen is not, because two other Turkish egg dishes get confused with it. Çılbır is poached eggs laid over garlicky strained yoghurt and finished with a spiced butter; there is no tomato and no yoghurt in menemen. Şakşuka in Turkey is actually a dish of fried aubergine and pepper in tomato sauce, usually served cool, and it is a different thing again from the North African and Levantine shakshuka of eggs baked in a spiced tomato sauce. Menemen sits apart from all of them: eggs softly folded, not poached, no yoghurt, the eggs stirred through rather than left whole in wells.

If you want the yoghurt-and-butter route, that is its own pleasure and I have written it up as Turkish eggs (çılbır) with chilli butter and yoghurt. If you want the eggs kept whole in a deeper, spiced sauce, that is shakshuka with feta and smoked paprika. Menemen is the soft-curd cousin, and the technique is what sets it apart.

The onion question divides Turkey. Purists, especially around İzmir, insist menemen has no onion; others soften a little onion with the pepper. I leave it out, because I want the pepper and tomato to stay bright and the dish to come together quickly, but a finely diced small onion cooked down first is a perfectly respectable variation.

The pepper matters

The defining vegetable here is the pepper, not the tomato. Turkish cooks use sivri biber, a long, thin, pale-green pepper with a mild, grassy warmth, or çarliston, its slightly larger cousin. Outside Turkey the closest easy substitute is a pointed green Romano pepper or a light-green Turkish pepper from a Middle Eastern grocer. A standard green bell pepper will do at a push, but it is blunter and more bitter, so slice it thin and cook it longer to sweeten it.

Cook the peppers gently first, on their own, until they soften and turn sweet without taking on colour. This builds the savoury base of the dish and takes the raw edge off. Rushing them over high heat leaves them squeaky and harsh, which no amount of egg will fix.

Pul biber, the Turkish red pepper flake, brings a fruity, mild heat and a little of its own oil-loving colour. It is worth buying; ordinary chilli flakes are hotter and sharper. A pinch stirred into the base and another scattered on top at the end is standard.

Building the base

Warm a good glug of olive oil over medium-low heat. Some cooks add a knob of butter alongside for richness, which is lovely at the weekend. Soften the sliced peppers slowly, then add the tomatoes.

Fresh, ripe tomatoes are traditional and best in summer; skin and chop them, or grate them on a box grater and discard the skins. Out of season, good tinned chopped tomatoes make a rounder, more reliable base. Either way, the crucial step is to cook the tomato down properly until it is thick and jammy and there is no thin, watery pool sitting in the pan. If the base is watery when the eggs go in, the finished menemen will be loose and soupy in the wrong way. Season with salt and, if your tomatoes are sharp, a small pinch of sugar to round them out.

You want a base you could almost spread on toast before the eggs ever arrive.

The eggs: low, slow, barely stirred

Here is the whole game. Turn the heat down to low. The base should be warm and thick, not fiercely bubbling.

Crack the eggs straight in. Some cooks beat them first for a uniform, custardy finish; I prefer to crack them whole and break the yolks only as I fold, so you get streaks of set white and soft yolk running through the tomato. Let the eggs sit undisturbed for a minute so the whites begin to set at the edges.

Then fold, slowly. Use a wooden spoon and drag the setting egg through the tomato in lazy, unhurried strokes, pausing between each pass. The pauses are what create soft curds: each time you stop, a patch of egg sets against the warm base before you move it. Constant, brisk stirring over high heat is exactly how you get dry, pebbly scrambled egg, and menemen is the opposite of that. Keep the heat low and your hand slow.

Stop while the eggs still look glossy and a touch underset. They carry on cooking in the hot pan on the way to the table, so pulling them off a moment early is the difference between silky and rubbery. This is the single most common mistake, and it is entirely a matter of nerve: take the pan off the heat sooner than feels safe.

Butter, oil and a few common additions

Olive oil is the Aegean default and gives menemen its fruity, savoury edge. A knob of butter alongside, or in place of some of the oil, makes a richer, more custardy version that leans towards the northern and inland Turkish style. Use butter when you want breakfast to feel like a treat and oil when you want it to taste of the coast; both are correct.

Two additions turn up often enough to mention. Sucuk, the spiced Turkish cured beef sausage, is sliced and fried in the pan before the peppers, lending its paprika-and-garlic fat to the whole dish; menemen with sucuk is a substantial meal rather than a light breakfast. Some cooks also stir in a spoon of tomato or pepper paste, salça, with the fresh tomato for a deeper, more concentrated base, which is a useful trick when your tomatoes are pale and out of season.

Keep the seasoning simple. Menemen does not want a cupboard of spices; salt, pul biber and the sweetness of well-cooked pepper and tomato are the whole flavour, with black pepper and fresh herbs to finish. Cumin, oregano and the like belong to other dishes and muddy this one.

Cheese, finishing and serving

Feta or the Turkish white cheese beyaz peynir is a common and excellent addition, crumbled in at the very end so it softens without melting away, adding little salty pockets. Fresh parsley brings colour and a green lift.

Finish with more pul biber and a thread of raw olive oil over the top. Serve menemen straight from the pan, communally, with a lot of bread torn for scooping; a soft white loaf or a Turkish flatbread is ideal, and a plate of olives and sliced cucumber on the side makes it a proper breakfast. A glass of strong black Turkish tea is the traditional partner.

Tips, scaling and make-ahead

Menemen is best cooked fresh and eaten at once, but the tomato-pepper base is entirely make-ahead. Cook it down, cool it, and keep it in the fridge for up to three days; reheat gently and add the eggs to order, which turns a slow weekend dish into a five-minute weekday one.

Scale it carefully. Eggs cook fast and unforgivingly, so if you are feeding four or more, work in two pans rather than one crowded one; a deep pile of egg over a wide base steams rather than sets and goes watery. Two to three eggs per person over a generous base is about right.

If your menemen turns out dry, you cooked the eggs too hard or too long, so next time pull it earlier and keep the heat lower. If it turns out watery, your tomato base was not reduced enough before the eggs went in. Both faults live in the base and the timing, and both are easy to correct once you have made it a couple of times.

The pan you use has a quiet effect on the result. A small, heavy skillet holds heat evenly and lets you cook a two-egg menemen with a good ratio of base to egg; a thin, wide pan runs hot and dry and pushes the eggs towards overcooking before you notice. Cast iron or a solid stainless pan gives you the gentle, forgiving heat this dish needs, and serving straight from that same pan at the table is entirely in keeping with how menemen is eaten in Turkey.

Get the rhythm and menemen becomes the thing you make on a slow morning with whatever tomatoes and peppers are going soft in the bowl. Low heat, a jammy base, eggs folded gently and pulled early, and a table’s worth of bread to finish the pan.