‘RHONY’: What is the origin of Shakshouka?

Reality television fans got an odd introduction to a delicious meal through a recent episode of The Real Housewives of New York.

The popular program revolves around a group of affluent New York women, as they live their lives and dish out a truly unending stream of drama. They also occasionally dish out other things, and in a recent episode of the show’s latest season, one of the Housewives cooked up a mid-16th century dish with roots clear across the world. As it turns out, there’s a good chunk of the population — particularly in America — who’ve never experienced the wonder of Shakshouka, but all that’s about to change.

What is Shakshouka?

Shakshouka is a bold dish, sometimes served as a side or breakfast, and sometimes as a main meal. It features poached eggs served in a spicy tomato sauce, seasoned with a range of spices that typically include cumin, paprika, and cayenne, with coriander and caraway occasionally making an appearance. Onions, garlic, and peppers are commonly incorporated into the dish as well, along with the occasional spicy sausage.

There are dozens of different iterations of Shakshouka, and some of them will taste wildly different, but all of them lean on the dish’s staple ingredients — eggs, tomato sauce, and spices.

Shakshouka origins

Shakshouka is a delicious tomato-based dish with origins in North Africa. The recipe’s official beginnings are still contested, several centuries after its creation, but most people credit either Ottoman, Tunisia, or Morocco — all in North Africa — for its birth.

Regardless of where, exactly, the dish was born, it’s a North African staple, and it’s spread far and wide. Shakshouka is now a crowd favorite across a number of countries, regions, and areas, each of which adds its own variations to the meal. Given its presence as a staple in many different cultures, it’s likely to taste different almost anywhere you go — as people add in lemon, cheese, cream, ranging spices, or spicy sausage — but one thing is constant: it’s always delicious.