Cast Iron Chorizo Shakshuka

This easy cast iron breakfast combines tomatoes, red peppers, AND carrots so you can start you’re morning off with a full serving of delicious vegetables. The carrots combine perfectly with the red peppers and tomatoes that a typical Shakshuka would call for. And the Chorizo gives a wonderfully spicy kick to wake up your senses and get you ready for the day! This breakfast is perfect for anyone who is looking for something out of the ordinary when it comes to breakfast. Make sure to follow my instagram to stay up to date, get special access to some of my new recipes before they hit to blog.

Our Breakfast Dilemma & The Easy Cast Iron Breakfast

My boyfriend and I have been trying to eat a bit healthier. We’re in a long distance relationship, thankfully still in the same state so we can see each other on the weekends. So our weekends are usually filled with snacking (on my part, love to snack), eating out and getting fast food, and a few months ago we decided that we needed to try harder at eating healthier on the weekends. Now we all know I love cooking, I mean duh I wouldn’t have started this blog otherwise. So we made a promise that we would start cooking more. Especially breakfast.

We have a tough time with breakfast, my boyfriend, Philip, is the type of person who MUST eat breakfast as their first meal. Like a stereotypical breakfast, he is a not an “eat last nights leftovers the next morning” type of person. Is there anyone else like this out there? He’s the first person I’ve met who DOESN’T want to warm up last nights burrito, or pizza. No, it HAS to be breakfast for the first meal.

Which brings us to the next issue – we both want to sleep in on the weekends! We fell into a bad pattern of waking up at 10AM but not getting out of bed until noon. Then by the time we showered and got ready to go out for breakfast, it’s 1PM. And by the way, that still counts as breakfast to him despite being lunch time, since it’s his first meal of the day. Then, at 5PM we would eat lunch! It was getting really bad, and we would eat dinner extremely late, which I’ve heard is not good for you metabolism!

Looking Forward

So this year, we’ve been trying to be a little bit better at when we eat, and what we eat. So thankfully I have been waking up early on the weekends with no extra effort on my part. (Does this mean I am truly becoming an adult?) And with that extra time I’ve been trying to come up with new things we can eat for breakfast. No disrespect to traditional eggs and pancakes, but if you’ve been here before, you know I’m always looking to try new things.

We’ve make Shakshuka a couple times before, always using different recipes. However the base was the same, tomatoes, cumin, red pepper, and eggs poaching in the wonderful sauce. I decided to try things a little different this time. Along with the red pepper, I added a large carrot. My boyfriend mentioned to me in passing that he was trying to eat more vegetables. What’s better than starting your day off with vegetables? I’d say we’re doing a good job so far and living a more healthy lifestyle. Now just to try to do this more often!

Easy Cast Iron Breakfast

Now I said that I’ve been waking up earlier, but on the contrary I also LOVE spending time in bed in the mornings. The house is calm, the sun rises in my bedroom window and warms the room. Although that also means it’s super bright in the mornings. Which is a good thing for me, because it motivates me to get out of bed and get moving. But not so good for my boyfriend, as we’re on separate sleep schedules right now. I’ve been falling asleep early, and he’s been struck with the insomnia we share (it goes back and forth between us, I’m not kidding.) The morning I made this easy cast iron shakshuka was just like any other.

Saturday Morning

The sun beat into my bedroom, illuminating our faces. I rolled over and did what I do best, annoy Philip until he wakes up. He was extremely reluctant to get up, and kept falling back to sleep as we discussed breakfast. I thought about waking him up once and for all, but he was just so cute, I had to restrain myself and let him sleep. So instead I tip-toed out of the room, and headed to the kitchen to make breakfast. I warned him that I would be waking him up when breakfast was ready. But I don’t think he expected how quickly I would be able to pull everything together.

That’s the beauty of the easy cast iron shakshuka recipe – make sure you cut up your veggies first, and watch how quickly the recipe comes together. Cooking the chorizo was the longest part, and then it was time the add the vegetables, and shortly after the dices tomatoes. While the sauce was simmering I attempted to wake Philip again, warning him that he only had a couple more minutes before the eggs were ready to go in. And once it’s in the oven, breakfast is only two to three minutes away! I ran back upstairs after putting the cast iron pan into the oven and forced him to get up and join me for breakfast. And I don’t think he was disappointed despite having to get out of bed.

Cooking The Eggs

Eggs can be tricky, and we are all still learning here. So when I made my One Pan Chorizo Hash in the past, I ended up cooking the eggs a little bit more than what we would like. So this time I decided to try something new – cooking them in the oven! Which also gave me the perfect excuse to use my mom’s beautiful cast iron pan. So the night before, Philip had requested that I try to make the eggs runnier, and I vowed to do my best. I put it in the oven for about 4 minutes, and it resulted in perfectly runny eggs. For me, and Philip at least, my mom’s only critique was about the eggs being too runny for her.

Cooking is always a guess and check kind of game. I don’t even want to say how many times I opened the oven to check on the eggs in that 4 minutes. But that’s what it’s all about, trying new things, testing new recipes and methods. That’s the fun of cooking, and then the best part? Seeing how happy my boyfriend is trying my new recipes. So far I’ve done pretty good in the kitchen! I think I’ll be making this easy cast iron breakfast again, and soon!