Shakshuka Recipe with Fresh Tomatoes | Aline Made (2024)

FAQs

How to turn tomatoes into tomato paste? ›

Options for the latter include adding flour, cornflour mixed with cold water, a beaten egg, cream cheese, or making a beurre manié from equal parts softened butter and flour. Stir well and give your thickener of choice a few minutes to work its magic.

Shakshouka (Arabic: شكشوكة : šakšūkah, also spelled shakshuka or chakchouka) is a Maghrebi dish of eggs poached in a sauce of tomatoes, olive oil, peppers, onion, and garlic, commonly spiced with cumin, paprika and cayenne pepper.

Every recipe and family makes shakshuka different but this is how I like to make it! Start out by cooking down tomato paste in olive oil to remove some of the acidity. The tomato paste gives the sauce a more rich tomato flavor.

How to Substitute Fresh Tomatoes for Tomato Paste. Fresh tomatoes can also stand in for tomato paste: puree until liquified and then follow the same formula: for every 1 tablespoons of tomato paste, use 3 tablespoons of the fresh juice.

Tomato paste is a concentrated form of cooked tomatoes, where tomatoes are cooked, strained and cooked again until most of the liquid has evaporated and the tomatoes reach a thick, pasty texture similar to toothpaste.

Liquids: If the sauce exudes a lot of liquid, cook it until most of the liquid has evaporated. By the time you add the eggs there should be no more than two tablespoons of liquid left in the pan.

Cover the dish so that some of the liquid can evaporate by about 1/3. (~15-20 minutes). We don't want our Shakshuka to be too watery so this step is important.

You'll often see shakshuka cooked in cast iron pans. If your pan isn't seasoned very well, I don't recommend it. The acidic tomato mixture can eat away at the seasoning, at which point the iron pan can impart some tinny flavor. (Speaking from experience here.)

Growing up in Egypt, my favorite was from a Cairo restaurant near the Nile called Felfela, where they served shakshuka eggs mild or spicy, with or without meat (often small chunks of beef or lamb), with a stack of warm pita bread.

What bread goes with shakshuka? ›

You'll also want bread for scooping up the tasty sauce.

You can't go wrong with pita bread, but slices of crusty bread are delicious as well.

Even though many people today associate shakshuka with Israel, it actually originated in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire: the only reason shakshuka is eaten in Israel is because North African Jewish immigrants brought it there.

Canned tomatoes have much more lycopene bioavailable compared to fresh tomatoes, which means you get more. When tomatoes are cooked, as they are in all types of processed tomatoes (such as cans, jars, sauces, salsa and ketchup), the lycopene is even more available to your body.

High-Acid Foods

Tomatoes (including foods like salsa and marinara sauce) and citrus fruits (such as oranges, grapefruits, and lemons) can trigger heartburn, especially if you eat them by themselves, on an empty stomach.

Add Some Baking Soda

If your tomato sauce is too acidic and verging on bitter, turn to baking soda, not sugar. Yes, sugar might make the sauce taste better, but good old baking soda is an alkaline that will help balance the excess acid. A little pinch should do the trick.

Since canned tomato paste is much thicker than crushed tomatoes, you will want to add something to it to help with the texture. If you have them available, add some fresh peeled and chopped tomatoes or even canned diced tomatoes to the paste and blend it all together.

Tomato Sauce: Definition and Uses

Tomato sauce is a mild, fairly thin, versatile sauce made from lightly concentrated fresh tomatoes or tomato paste and water. Tomato sauce is seasoned with salt, onion powder and garlic powder, although you can also choose a no salt added (NSA) sauce as well.

A: Tomato paste is concentrated tomatoes. Yep, it's really just tomatoes that have been cooked down, then had the seeds and skins strained out, and then cooked down some more until it becomes super dense and, well, paste-like.

Because tomato paste is a concentrated form of tomato puree, you can dilute it to the consistency of tomato sauce without much fuss. Adding one cup of water to three-quarters of a cup of tomato paste will result in a tomato base with the same texture and thickness as tomato sauce (after some brisk stirring).