If you’re looking to spice up your eggs at breakfast time (or more precisely, herb up your eggs), there’s one essential sauce you should know: chimichurri. This oily, tangy green sauce (yes, chimichurri looks a little like pesto) hails from Argentina. It’s made with parsley, oregano, garlic, olive oil, salt, red wine vinegar, and chili flakes. Some recipes will call for ingredients like cilantro or occasionally shallots, and some cooks prefer milder vegetable oils in place of strong-tasting olive oil.
Chimichurri’s history is a little hazy: Some say it comes from centuries of Indigenous South American food culture, while others say Argentinian cowboys (called gauchos) devised it based on the herbs they could find out in the Argentinian plains. Still others suggest it came from European immigrants modifying recipes from back home to fit their new country. Either way, it’s a big deal in its country of origin, where it’s typically served with Argentina’s top-quality steak.
But meat is far from the only medium that suits this herbaceous, tangy, and spicy sauce with its big kick of garlic. As a pretty neutral food, eggs are another great place to try chimichurri — after all, sauces from hot sauce to pesto or ketchup already go with eggs. You can fry, scramble, or poach them as you wish and just spoon some chimichurri on top to serve them. Alternatively, thanks to chimichurri’s oily base, you can even cook your eggs directly in it, a little like the TikTok viral pesto eggs. Just put the chimichurri in a pan, heat it, and fry eggs directly in it.
Making chimichurri to use on your eggs
A good chimichurri is a little tougher to find in supermarkets than pesto — you may be able to find mass-produced versions of chimichurri in places like Walmart or Trader Joe’s, but there’s a good chance you’ll have to make it yourself.
Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to make at home considering that its ingredients are standard. You will need a moderate volume of olive oil and parsley and a few tablespoons or so of vinegar. Other ingredients like oregano, salt, and red pepper flakes are measured by teaspoon, so you won’t need a huge amount (although this obviously varies based on your batch size, and you might need a little more oregano if you opt to use fresh). You can prepare it in a food processor, crush it with a mortar and pestle, or just chop by hand; some people prefer the more varied texture of the hand-chopped version compared to the ultra-smooth paste you’ll get from a food processor.
The best news is that there’s no shortage of ways to use any chimichurri you have leftover after your eggs. Obviously, steak and grilled meat is a great place to put it, but chimichurri is a wonderful marinade, too. It also goes amazingly with roasted vegetables, potatoes, mixed with yogurt as a dipping sauce, or just straight onto bread: The sky’s the limit.
