Not Just a Man's World

This recipe originally came from Good Housekeeping, but since I first found it I’ve found similar recipes in numerous magazines and on plenty of websites.  I’ll share more baked eggs recipes as I get round to trying them. 

When I first cooked this, the recipe called for four tablespoons of cream drizzled over the top of the eggs just before it went into the oven.  Not having baked eggs before I worried that this may be crucial to the recipe and left it in but I’ve now taken this out for two reasons:

1. cream is agreed by most to be non-Paleo – I’m happy to go with yoghurt but I’ll leave out cream where it isn’t essential and other recipes I’ve found bake the eggs without anything drizzled over the top; and
2. the cream made it incredibly rich – I can usually quite happily eat my way through four or five eggs but I suffered trying to eat four eggs cooked this way.

My biggest problem with the recipe was that it works best with individual little ceramic (or cast iron) dishes which just take a bit of spinach, mushroom and a single egg.  I didn’t have anything smaller than a small roasting dish which took all four eggs and all of the spinach and mushroom.  Doing it that way was fine but required a significant amount of extra cooking time and removed any lingering possibility of a bit of runny yolk.  Either way though, it tastes great.

Paleo baked eggs with spinach and mushroom

Ingredients (serves 1-2):
3 tbsp olive oil
125g mushrooms, cut into large pieces like quarters
225g bag baby leaf spinach
2-4 large eggs (personal preference for how many eggs each person wants comes into this)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 190C.
2. Heat the olive oil in a pan, add the mushrooms and stir-fry on a high heat for 30 seconds.
3. Add the spinach and stir-fry until the spinach is wilted.
4. Divide the spinach and mushrooms between the ovenproof dishes.  The best result comes from two 1 pint dishes with one egg per dish – if your egg ends up too thick in the dish then be aware that you will need to cook it for longer.
5. Carefully break an egg into the centre of each dish, or if you are putting multiple eggs in each dish break them into the dish to keep the yolks away from the side and from each other.
6. Bake the eggs in the oven until the eggs are just set (remember that they will continue to cook slightly after they come out of the oven).  For a single egg in a 1 pint dish it should only take about 12 minutes.  With my mammoth baking dish with 4 eggs it took 20 minutes.  Be aware that once the white starts to set at the edges it will only take a couple of minutes more to set the whole egg.
7. Serve while still hot.

Related posts:

1. Paleo recipes: quick-cook chicken, mushroom and spinach
2. Paleo recipes: easy baked bananas with orange zest yoghurt
3. Paleo recipes: baked bananas
4. Paleo recipes: mussels in a garlic cream sauce (primal)