Turkish fried egg with spinach and pine nuts is a savory breakfast built on garlicky yogurt, wilted spinach, blistered cherry tomatoes, and a fried egg finished with a spoonful of chili butter and toasted pine nuts.

It’s a version of çılbır, the classic Turkish breakfast, made heartier with vegetables and a bit of crunch on top.

I make this most often on slow weekend mornings, when there’s time to toast the pine nuts properly and let the yogurt sit out until it’s not fridge-cold anymore.

If Mediterranean-leaning, protein-packed breakfasts are your thing, these are worth bookmarking too:

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Ingredients You’ll Need

This one leans on pantry basics plus a few fresh things: thick yogurt, a couple of garlic cloves, baby spinach, and cherry tomatoes for a little sweetness against the tang.

Pine nuts add crunch, but toast them in a dry pan before you start since they burn fast once they turn color. Swap sourdough or warm pita for whatever bread you have on hand.

Important Recipe Notes

• Use full-fat Greek yogurt. Low-fat versions turn watery once warmed by the egg and spinach, and the sauce loses the thick base that holds the dish together.
• Watch the pine nuts closely. They go from golden to burnt in under a minute once they start browning, so stay at the stove instead of walking away.
• Let the yogurt sauce rest for 10 minutes before serving. Raw garlic straight into cold yogurt tastes sharp, and the flavor mellows into something closer to a proper garlic sauce once it sits.
• This dish doesn’t reheat well. The egg firms up and the yogurt can separate, so it’s really a cook-and-eat-now recipe. Store the yogurt and the spinach-tomato mixture separately in the fridge for up to 2 days and fry a fresh egg when you’re ready to eat.
• This one takes more coordination than a usual fried egg breakfast. You’re managing three pans at once (the yogurt bowl doesn’t count), so have the pine nuts toasted and the yogurt made before the eggs go in.

How to Serve, Store & Customize This Recipe

Serving:

Serve this straight from the skillet while the egg yolk is still runny and the chili butter is warm enough to pool at the edges.

It works well next to warm pita, thick country bread, or a simple flatbread for scooping.

Storing:

The finished dish doesn’t keep, but the components mostly do. Store the garlic yogurt in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days, and the cooked spinach and tomatoes separately for up to 2 days.

Reheat the spinach and tomatoes gently in a skillet rather than the microwave, which tends to make the spinach rubbery, and fry the eggs fresh each time.

Variation:

Swap the spinach for chopped kale or Swiss chard if that’s what you have, just add an extra minute or two of cooking time.

Ground lamb or crumbled feta both work well stirred into the spinach mixture for a more filling version.

For less heat, leave the Aleppo pepper out of the butter entirely and finish with a drizzle of plain olive oil instead.