Eggs baked in a skillet atop smoothly melted leeks and tasty spinach for a weekend brunch. Such a healthy and virtuous main course just begs for a croissant, don’t you think? Add in a foamy latte and I’m in heaven.
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- Gather the ingredients
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- Sauté the leeks, spring onions and spinach
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- Divide the Spinach between two cast iron skillets
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- Carefully break the eggs into hollows in the spinach
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- Bake for 15 minutes
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- Voila! Indulge with croissant
Skillet-Baked Eggs with Spinach
Delectable baked eggs on melted leeks and sauteed fresh spinach. Perfect for a healthy brunch, and allows the indulgence of a croissant on the side!
Ingredients
Scale
- 1 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 3 tbsp chopped leek (white and pale-green parts only)
- 2 tbsp chopped scallion (white and pale-green parts only)
- 6 cups fresh spinach (6 oz)
- kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
- 2 large eggs
- pinch of smoked paprika
- 1 tsp chopped fresh oregano
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325°. Melt the butter and oil in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Add leek and scallion; reduce heat to low and cook until soft (about 10 minutes). Add spinach and lemon juice; season with salt. Increase heat to medium-high; cook, turning frequently, until wilted, 4–5 minutes.
- Transfer spinach mixture to two small cast-iron skillets or one 8″ skillet, leaving any excess liquid behind. Make a deep indentation in each small skillet, or two in the larger skillet. Carefully break 1 egg into each hollow, taking care to keep yolks intact. Bake until egg whites are set, 10–15 minutes.
- Sprinkle with a touch of smoked paprika and chopped oregano. Serve immediately.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 2
I’m sharing this post with Between Naps on the Porch.
I love leeks, especially in potato soup. Great recipe.
I am allergic to onions. I can eat leeks, a true Vadalia onion and sometimes a Bermuda onion.
It’s the allilum.
Interesting that you can eat leeks, but not onions! I thought they were the same family.
They are all allium (and related to narcissus, BTW), but the granex onion (Vidalia and Peru) and leeks have lower levels of allicin, which is also why they don’t generally water your eyes. I’ve noticed that even green onions can be quite strong, depending on origin and breed. Cooking them well helps break down the sulphur compounds, which may allow an allergy-sufferer to eat what s/he could not otherwise. I tuck a slice of smoked salmon under those eggs! Yummy.
(P.S. Helen, You may wish to de-cap the spinach. Sorry, I’m an editor of a couple of Merc group publications…I just can’t help it!)
Ah – so it’s the alicin that’s the culprit. How annoying to be allergic! Onions are so ubiquitous in cooking, aren’t they? But leeks are a wonderful substitute, and Vidalia onions are very flavourful, though I find their huge size to be a bit awkward (so much left over from what is required in the average recipe).
Not sure what you mean by “de-cap the spinach”, Beatrice. Do you mean take off the capital letter in Spinach in the title?
I could have sworn there was a capitalized spinach where there shouldn’t be, but now I don’t see it. Just finished editing the Pagoda newsletter, so I may have editor’s fatigue…sorry.
Always great to have another set of eyes, especially friendly and knowledgeable ones. Between the table set up or food preparation, photography, table tear down, photography editing, website logistics, blog composition, and now Pinterest gyrations, it’s easy for errors to slip in. Too many moving parts.
Have a good day, Beatrice!