What Can I Cook With Eggs? 9 Dinners and Breakfasts From Our Recipes

Eggs are the dinner you can always make

If the fridge looks empty, there are usually still eggs. They are quick, cheap and strangely flexible: scrambled into rice, boiled into a curry, folded into bread, poached in tomato sauce. A lot of desi home cooking runs on them.

Here are nine dishes from our recipe library, from 10 minutes to about an hour. Quantities are given in metric and US units on each recipe page.

Ten minutes or less of cooking

Desi omelette. 4 eggs for 2 people, with a finely chopped onion, tomato, green chilli and 2 tablespoons of coriander, beaten with salt and red chilli powder. The base cooks about 3 minutes on a medium pan, and you flip it briefly for a minute. Chop the vegetables very fine, so the omelette holds together when you turn it, and use medium heat so the inside cooks before the base burns. 10 minutes, Easy.

Anda paratha. A thin flatbread half-cooked on a griddle, flipped, then topped with a beaten egg and onion mixture and folded over like an envelope. 150 g (1.25 cups) of flour and 3 eggs make 2 servings. 30 minutes, Easy. Keep the dough thin, so it cooks through quickly once folded.

Egg fried rice. 3 eggs scrambled lightly and set aside, then 300 g (2 cups) of cold rice tossed in a hot wok with onion, carrot, peas and 2 tablespoons of soy sauce. Use day-old chilled rice. Our rice post covers how to store it safely. 25 minutes.

Egg curries

Egg curry (anda curry). 6 eggs boiled about 10 minutes, peeled and lightly slit so the gravy soaks in, then simmered 10 minutes in a thin onion and tomato gravy. Serves 4 and takes 40 minutes. For a richer curry, shallow-fry the boiled eggs briefly before adding them.

Aloo anday. 4 boiled eggs and 300 g (0.65 lb) of cubed potato for 3 people. The potato cooks in the gravy with a cup of water, then the halved eggs simmer in it for 5 minutes. 35 minutes, Easy. Mash a few potato cubes into the gravy to thicken it.

Dimer torkari. The Bangladeshi egg curry. 6 eggs are rubbed with turmeric and salt and fried whole until spotted golden, then added back to a gravy with potato wedges and cumin for the last 3 minutes. Frying them first stops them turning rubbery. 40 minutes, Easy.

Different shapes

Shakshuka. 4 eggs poached in a sauce of 4 tomatoes, a bell pepper, an onion, 3 garlic cloves and cumin. You make small wells in the sauce, crack an egg into each, and cook covered on low heat about 5 minutes, until the whites are set and the yolks are still soft. Serve from the pan with warm bread. 30 minutes. See the note on runny yolks below.

Dim bhorta. Mashed egg for 2. Four eggs boiled for 9 to 10 minutes, mashed coarsely with onion, green chilli, coriander and a tablespoon of mustard oil, and eaten at once with hot rice. 17 minutes. A pinch of roasted cumin adds depth if you want it.

Balaleet. A Gulf breakfast that surprises people the first time: sweet saffron and cardamom vermicelli topped with a thin plain omelette sliced into strips. 3 eggs, 200 g (7 oz) of vermicelli. 25 minutes. It is sweet and savoury at once.

Boiling eggs for curry

Our recipes call for hard-boiled eggs for the curries: about 10 minutes for the egg curry and aloo anday, and 9 to 10 minutes for dim bhorta. After boiling, cool them in cold water so they are easy to peel and stop cooking. If you overboil, the yolk turns grey-green at the edges. It is harmless but not pretty.

Egg safety, briefly

• Keep eggs in the fridge. US guidance puts raw eggs in the shell at three to five weeks, but go by the date on the carton.
• Hard-boiled eggs should be refrigerated within 2 hours and eaten within about a week.
• Cook until firm for any egg dish served to babies, pregnant women, older people or anyone with a weakened immune system. Runny yolks, as in shakshuka, carry a small risk of salmonella, and cooking the yolk firm greatly reduces it. (UK advice relaxes this for eggs with the British Lion mark; US advice does not.)
• Do not use cracked or dirty eggs, and wash your hands and board after touching raw egg.
• Egg dishes such as curry should be reheated until steaming hot. Cool and refrigerate leftovers within 2 hours, and eat them within three to four days.
• A rough freshness check: an egg that floats in a bowl of water is old. It may still be fine to eat, but crack it into a separate bowl first and smell it.

Swaps

• Fewer eggs than the recipe asks for? Omelette and egg fried rice scale easily. Curries scale less well, because the gravy is built for the eggs. Our recipe pages have a servings scaler.
• Vegetarian eggless family member? The dishes above are not eggless, so choose something from the other posts in this series for that member.

Cook it with Degchi

Degchi's pantry lets you mark eggs as Have, Low or Out, and the Home screen suggests dishes from what you have. A recipe page shows Have or Out against each ingredient, plus a timer for each step. The app is free and in closed beta; join the beta if you would like to try it.

Questions

How many eggs per person? In our recipes, about 1.5 eggs per person for curry (6 eggs for 4) and 2 per person for omelette (4 eggs for 2).

Can I boil eggs ahead for curry? Yes. Boiled eggs keep in the fridge, so they can be boiled the day before and added to the gravy. Keep them refrigerated until then.

Why do my omelettes stick or break? Use enough oil, medium heat and very finely chopped vegetables. Let the base set before flipping.

Can I freeze egg curry? We have not tested it. Boiled egg whites turn rubbery when frozen, so we would eat egg curry fresh or within a few days.