clean-out-the-crisper eggs

Sometimes the most delicious meals are born from bits and bobs that need to be used up before they go to waste. That’s what happened on a recent noon hour when I found a sad wedge of green cabbage in my crisper drawer.

I chopped it up with some onion and carrot and sent everything to the sauté pan. After it cooked down a bit, I threw together soy sauce, gochujang, and honey, and I let the vegetables caramelize in this sweet and savory sauce. Then in went the eggs to glue it all together. 

This would have been delicious on its own, but I wanted something fresh and herby to balance out the eggs. So I threw together a cool cucumber yogurt sauce—basically a rough-and-tumble tzatziki—to drizzle over the eggs.

That’s how a dish inspired by a forgotten wedge of cabbage has become an anticipated lunch in my weekly rotation. What have you done with your eggs lately?

Watch the video!

Eggs

1 heaping cup chopped green cabbage

1/2 cup sliced yellow onion

1/4 cup grated carrot

1/2 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon gochujang

1/4 teaspoon honey

2 teaspoons water

2 or 3 eggs, beaten

1/2 tablespoon butter

Sauce

2 tablespoons plain Greek yogurt

1/4 cup chopped cucumber

A few mint leaves

1 clove garlic

1 lemon wedge

Directions

1. Heat olive oil in skillet over medium heat. Add the cabbage, onion, and carrot, and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened.

2. Whisk together the soy sauce, gochujang, honey, and water in a bowl. Add to the skillet and continue cooking until the vegetables are caramelized in the sauce.

3. Add 1/2 tablespoon butter to the skillet and move it around the vegetables, making sure the bottom of the pan gets greased in the butter. This will make it easier to remove the eggs from the pan.

4. Add the beaten eggs to the skillet and cook without disturbing for a few minutes. Once the edges of the eggs look dry and firm, flip, and cook a minute or two more. (I haven’t managed a totally clean flip, I suspect because of the ratio of vegetables to eggs. It’s fine! If they don’t want to be an omelet, let ‘em be scrambled, or something in between.)

5. In a bowl, combine the tzatziki sauce ingredients. Use a processor or immersion blender to blend.

6. Plate the eggs, drizzle on the sauce. You know what to do.