Product Review: Cook House Breakfast Sauce-Shakshuka

I picked this up a long time ago and never used it but I’ve seen it sold since and I have no reason to think it won’t be sold again. Since we are under (right now, voluntary) quarantine, I thought I’d give it a shot. I want to say it was about $3.50 when I bought it but I am not 100% sure.

One reason it took me so long to make it is that the directions have you adding a lot of ingredients—onions, garlic, peppers, garnishing with parsley— to the mix which seems to defeat the advantage of using the jar vs making it from scratch with a (much cheaper!) can of tomatoes. Obviously you have to add the eggs but you’d all you would have to do is heat it up. Shakshuka is basically just seasoned tomatoes so I don’t know how it would be difficult to bottle a sauce that only required you to heat it up.

Anyway, I didn’t want to waste my fresh onions and garlic on a jarred sauce (conserving because of quarantine) so I stirred in a bit of dehydrated onions, cayenne and granulated garlic to the sauce. I sauteed the about 6 oz of arugula and spinach I had from over a week ago before adding the sauce. I stirred in the 6 oz of leftover canned chickpeas from last night in too. I served it over couscous since we didn’t have pita.

The verdict: It was tasty. I can’t imagine buying it again because I don’t think it gave me much more of a head start than opening a can of crushed tomatoes would. I also thought it was odd it said it yielded 12 servings. It’s a main dish, not a serving of salsa; even if you added six eggs to it (they suggest poaching 4-6) and everyone only eats one egg and small amount of sauce, that’s only six servings.

I guess if you don’t mind following the instructions and sauteing vegetables before adding the sauce and have zero spices on hand, it might be worth your while. It was tasty enough, it just seemed pointless.