Baked eggs with creamy coconut kale

Creamy, nourishing, filling and super delicious, these baked eggs with kale are the easiest and tastiest way to get more greens into your breakfast. While coconut milk and lemon thyme make this breakfast (or easy dinner!) feel like a treat, they’re beyond simple to whip up.

The number of recipes on my site that are made with kale might lead you think that I actually like the stuff.

While I don’t necessarily dislike kale, I definitely don’t love it. I eat it because, as we’ve all been told in recent years, it’s super duper good for you. And when cooked with the right ingredients, it can actually be kinda, sorta really tasty.

For me, eating is a fine balance of taste, pleasure and getting all the nutrients I think my family and I need. If there’s a superfood I don’t really love but know I should be eating more of, I take it on as a fun challenge to cook so that it checks the pleasure box, too.

Getting more vegetables — and greens, in particular — into our daily breakfast routine always seems to be tough. There’s always sweet potato pancakes and a little spinach thrown into scrambled eggs. But when I was searching for something a little different and altogether more exciting, my mind went right to baked eggs.

While I usually make these on the weekends for brunch with friends, there’s no reason they can’t be made on busy weekday mornings. Last week, I tried making the kale filling the night before so that next morning all I had to do was heat up my oven while Lulu was getting dressed. That morning, I simply cracked the eggs into the prepared ramekins, popped them in the oven and baked for 12 minutes. When they came out, they were creamy, rich and felt oh-so-nourishing. It was a real treat for a Tuesday.

COOKING NOTES

This recipe can be made with any green — spinach, chard, collards or whatever you have in your fridge. I like using baby kale or baby spinach because it’s milder and you don’t have to chop it. If you only have the big leaves, make sure to roughly chop before cooking. And a note on the eggs: they can go from looking undercooked to overcooked in the blink of an eye. Check your eggs after 10 minutes and then again after 12 minutes. Check again after 1 minute. If it looks like all the whites are pretty white, take it out. To make this an easy weekday breakfast, make the greens mixture the day before. The morning of, simply crack the eggs into the prepared ramekins and bake.

SERVES 4
TOTAL TIME: 30 MINUTES

INGREDIENTS

2 tablespoons coconut oil
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
8 sprigs lemon thyme, leaves removed and roughly chopped (regular thyme is fine too)
1 pound baby kale
½ cup coconut milk
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
4 large eggs
4 (5-ounce) ramekins

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Heat the oven to 350°F.
2. In a skillet over medium-low heat, warm the coconut oil until melted. Add the shallot and a pinch of salt and cook until soft, 2 to 4 minutes. Add the garlic, red pepper flakes and thyme and cook until just fragrant, about 1 minute.
3. Add the kale, half of the coconut milk, and a couple of pinches of salt. Cover the skillet and cook until the kale is just wilted, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove the lid and cook, stirring, until some of the excess liquid is evaporated, 2 to 4 minutes.
4. Arrange the ramekins on a baking sheet and divide the kale mixture evenly among them. Evenly divide the remaining coconut milk between the four ramekins.
5. Make an indentation in the center of each and carefully crack an egg into each indentation. Sprinkle each egg with salt and some freshly ground black pepper. Transfer to a rack in the middle of the oven  and cook until the whites are just set, about 12 minutes.
6. Remove the tray with the ramekins from the oven and let cool slightly. Serve the eggs in the ramekins on their own or with a side of toast.