Eggs are a source of protein I often overlook. I view them as breakfast food, and I’m not the type of person who cooks breakfast. My morning “cooking” is blending a smoothie or reheating leftovers in the microwave. I’d love to try more breakfasts from around the world, but I’m just not awake enough in the morning LOL! However, this blog has taught me eggs can make a quick and easy dinner. Don’t believe me? Check out these Mexican Baked Eggs. They were delicious! And in that vein, I am trying another egg dish for dinner, but from the opposite side of the world. Turkish Menemen is filled with eggs, vegetables, and spices, and promises to be very quick and easy. Let’s find out!
Turkish Menemen Recipe is an amazingly tasty breakfast, lunch and dinner recipe. Summer tomatoes and green peppers combine with eggs in a pan to make this simple, quick and oh so yummy meal.
The Ingredients
Ah, I do love a recipe with a short ingredient list that’s filled with easy-to-find basics, and this Turkish Menemen has exactly that. I had to shop for everything but the salt, pepper, and olive oil, but I didn’t have a problem finding anything.
I went with 28 ounces of canned diced tomatoes to really up the easy factor. The only thing I wasn’t sure of was the green peppers. I had to scroll through the photos in the blog post to confirm whether I needed to buy a green bell pepper or hot peppers.
Hot peppers were the way to go, but I can’t tell you what type they were because they were listed as “long hot green peppers”. Not very helpful and not too accurate—they were really quite mild. Based on the photos I have found, I think they are Italian frying peppers or Anaheim peppers. It’s hard to tell for sure, so I hope the photos are helpful.
The Process
The blog post with this recipe says there are two options for this recipe: scrambling the eggs or something more similar to poaching. The recipe describes the latter option, so that’s how I made mine.
I did cook the eggs a little longer than the time listed to harden the yolks a bit. I also added a lid to the pan during the extra couple of minutes, and I think I overdid it. It was still good, but the eggs were too hard to dip the bread into. Anyway, here’s how my time was spent:
- 10 minutes to prep
- 30 minutes to cook
- 40 minutes total
That was significantly more than the 25-minute total time listed, even if I take into account the extra 2 minutes for the eggs. I think the slow-down happened in a few places.
The first was in the prep work, which took me 10 minutes instead of 5. The next might have been in the first step, sauteeing the onion and peppers. I spent 5 minutes on that, but the instructions only say to saute until soft.
I know part of the slowdown was with the eggs. I chose to cook them for the maximum time of 10 minutes, then I added another 2 because I didn’t think the yolks were hard enough. If I had followed the recipe’s times, I could have had it done at 36-38 minutes. Still a lot longer than 25 minutes, though.
Despite the longer total time, I didn’t have any trouble with this recipe. Things went smoothly, but I did make the mistake of draining the tomatoes before adding them. That was on me and adding a little water (maybe a 1/3 cup) fixed things right up.
