Valerie Bertinelli’s Five-Star Shakshuka With an Italian Twist

Valerie Bertinelli’s Shakshuka recipe has to be tried.

Bold in flavor and a satisfying anytime-of-day meal, the Food Network personality’s Italian spin on the Middle Eastern egg dish serves up gently poached eggs in a tomato-based sauce for a delicious meal that will keep you full for hours.

Bertinelli’s Shakshuka merges North African, Middle Eastern, and Italian flavors

This humble, yet luxurious, baked egg dish has its roots in North African and Middle Eastern cuisine and gets its bold flavors from ingredients including yellow bell pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, ground coriander, and ground cumin.

The former One Day at a Time star puts an Italian stamp on the dish with a marinara sauce featuring garlic, chopped tomatoes, Italian seasoning, fresh basil, and unsalted butter.

Bertinelli, in the Food Network video, below, for this recipe notes that it’s important to make the Shakshuka in “a pan that you can also put into the oven. Because we’re going to put it all together, put the eggs in, and then it bakes for a little while.”

Valerie Bertinelli’s egg dish comes together quickly

Bertinelli starts by sauteeing sliced red onions in a cast iron pan in olive oil and seasoning it with the cumin, coriander, and red pepper flakes. Add the minced garlic, allowing it to soften. Once the onions and garlic are on the tender side, the marinara sauce is spooned in and stirred, giving the dish a definite Italian flavor (“I think you can mix cultures that way”).

To situate the eggs in the hot sauce, the culinary personality says to “make a little place” in the sauce with a spoon or spatula and drop the raw egg in, repeating with each egg. Adding a deliciously tangy, briny layer of flavor to the dish, she sprinkles chopped feta cheese on the sauce and eggs.

Place the pan in a preheated 375-degree F oven for about 10 minutes “until those eggs cook all the way through, nice and runny but not too runny.”

For serving, she revealed that she likes “to eat my Shakshuka with a little bit of arugula on the bottom and have it wilt from the heat.”

Lastly, Bertinelli in the video adds freshly made pesto sauce to her dish for an even more pronounced Italian touch.

Get the complete recipe and reviews on Food Network’s site.

Food Network reviewers loved Bertinelli’s version of Shakshuka

Most reviewers on Food Network’s site gave Bertinelli’s Shakshuka five-star ratings, with high marks for its ease of preparation and as a satisfying meal for the whole family.

“Was told this meal/recipe made it into the top 5 of best meals we’ve tried over the past 6 months! It was a hit with my family!,” one home cook wrote, and another reviewer said, “This was so flavorful and easy to prep.”

A home cook shared that they took a shortcut from Bertinelli’s homemade marinara for an even quicker shakshuka: “This recipe is a big hit in my family and easy to make. I used a jar of Rao’s marinara rather than making my own to save time.”