Baked Eggs with Chard, White Beans, and Dill over Garlic Yogurt
Swiss chard and spinach cooked down with leek and white beans, eggs baked into the greens until set, all spooned over cold garlic yogurt with paprika oil.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
A bunch of chard going limp at the tips turns into a morning that feels like a proper sit-down. It is the plate you get all over Turkey and Greece in different arrangements: something cold and tart underneath, something hot and green on top, olive oil connecting them. Nothing about it is fussy, but the temperature contrast is the whole point, so do not skip taking the yogurt out early. Cold yogurt straight from the refrigerator seizes up under the hot greens and tastes flat, and twenty minutes on the counter fixes it completely.
The greens are cooked in two stages because chard is really two vegetables. The stems are crunchy and want six or seven minutes with the leek before anything else joins them, and the leaves want ninety seconds, just long enough to slump. Cooking them together gives you either squeaky stems or gray leaves. Once the leaves are down, the beans go in whole and warm through in the steam, and then you scrape wells right down to the metal for the eggs. Bake rather than cover on the stove, because dry oven heat sets the whites evenly while the yolks stay soft and bright.
The plate has real weight to it, with three separate things happening in every forkful: tart yogurt, sweet cooked greens, and a soft egg. The dill and parsley go on after the pan comes out of the oven so they stay green and sharp, and the paprika oil is not decoration, it carries the smell of the dish to you before the first bite. I make this on slow weekend mornings and also on weeknights when dinner needs to be quiet and green, and it is the dish I put in front of people who tell me they do not like chard. It reheats poorly, so it is worth eating right away, standing around the pan if that is what the morning allows.
Ingredients
- 8 large eggs
- 2 cups plain strained nonfat yogurt, Greek style
- 1 large bunch swiss chard (about 1 lb), stems sliced thin and leaves cut into wide ribbons
- 9 oz spinach, thick stems pulled off
- 1 cup canned cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 small leek, white and pale green parts only, sliced into thin half moons
- 1/2 cup chopped fresh dill
- 1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
- 4 cloves garlic, 1 grated and 3 sliced thin
- 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, plus 1 tsp for the paprika oil
- 1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp sweet paprika
- 1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
- 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
Instructions
- Stir together the garlic yogurt: Grate one clove of garlic into the yogurt, add the lemon juice and a pinch of the salt, and stir until smooth. Leave it on the counter while you cook, uncovered, for at least twenty minutes. It should be cool rather than cold when it meets the greens, which is what keeps it from stiffening on the plate.
- Prepare the greens: Heat the oven to 375°F. Slice the chard stems off the leaves and cut them into 1/4-inch pieces. Stack the leaves and cut them into wide ribbons, then wash both and shake them dry. Spinach goes in last and takes no preparation beyond pulling off any thick stems.
- Soften the stems and leek: Warm 2 tbsp olive oil in a 12-inch ovenproof skillet over medium heat. Add the leek, the chard stems, and the sliced garlic with the remaining salt and cook for six to seven minutes, stirring now and then. You want the stems bendable and the leek translucent with no color on it.
- Wilt the leaves and warm the beans: Add the chard ribbons in handfuls, letting each batch slump before the next goes in, since the pan will not hold them all at once, then the spinach. Two to three minutes in total and the pan will drop to about a third of its volume. Stir in the cannellini beans and the black pepper, and cook one minute more until the beans are hot through.
- Bake the eggs into the greens: Spread the greens flat and scrape eight wells down to the pan floor with the back of a spoon. Crack an egg into each. Bake for twelve to fifteen minutes, until the whites are opaque and firm all the way to the yolk and the yolks are set through with no wobble when you shake the pan.
- Paprika oil, herbs, and plates: While the pan bakes, warm 1 tsp olive oil with the paprika in a small pan over low heat for thirty seconds, until it smells sweet and turns deep red. Spread the garlic yogurt across four plates, lift portions of greens and eggs onto it, spoon the paprika oil over, and shower the dill and parsley across the top.
Variations
- Chickpeas instead of white beans: Swap the cannellini for the same amount of drained chickpeas, which stay firmer in the greens and give the plate more chew.
- Feta on top: Crumble a small handful of feta over the hot greens just before serving so it softens without melting into the pan.
- Warm spice: Add a half teaspoon of ground cumin to the leek and chard stems for a rounder, earthier version that leans toward the Levant.
- Mint and scallion yogurt: Stir chopped mint and thinly sliced scallion into the yogurt along with the garlic for a fresher, sharper base under the eggs.
- Tomato in the greens: Add a handful of halved cherry tomatoes with the beans and let them blister slightly before the eggs go in.
Storage & Leftovers
This is a dish to eat the day it is made. The eggs go rubbery on a second heating and the yogurt splits if it is warmed at all, so if you know you will have leftovers, bake only as many eggs as you plan to serve and keep the rest of the greens separate.
The greens and beans on their own keep three days in a sealed container in the refrigerator and are genuinely good cold, stirred into more yogurt with lemon. Reheat them in a dry skillet over medium heat for two or three minutes rather than in the microwave, which makes chard weep.
The garlic yogurt keeps five days covered in the refrigerator and gets sharper as it sits, since grated garlic keeps working. Stir it before using and slacken it with a spoonful of water if it has tightened. It is worth making a double batch for the week on its own account.
Notes & Tips
- Take the yogurt out first: It is the very first thing to do, before the oven is even on. Yogurt that has sat out twenty minutes spreads across the plate; yogurt straight from the refrigerator sits in a stiff lump and cools the eggs down.
- Cut the chard stems small: Quarter-inch pieces cook in the same six minutes the leek needs. Anything larger is still crunchy when the leaves are ready, and there is no fixing it later in the pan.
- Wash the greens and do not dry them completely: The water clinging to the leaves is what steams them down. Shake them off, but a wet leaf is an advantage here rather than a problem.
- Use an ovenproof skillet you can lift: A 12-inch cast iron pan holding two pounds of greens and eight eggs is heavy coming out of a hot oven. Have your mitts and a trivet ready before you start baking.
- Watch the paprika: Thirty seconds in warm oil over low heat is all it takes. Paprika scorches fast and turns bitter, and the color goes from red to brown the moment it does.
- Herbs go on off the heat: Dill and parsley stirred into the hot pan turn dark and taste like hay. Scattered over the plates at the last second, they stay bright green and smell like the garden.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- The eggs, the yogurt, and the beans are the three things holding this plate up, and they work in different registers. The eggs give it richness and protein, the yogurt brings tang and calcium, and the beans add body and the kind of fiber that makes a breakfast eat like a meal.
- Swiss chard cooks down sweeter than it starts, and the stems keep a faint mineral edge that the yogurt plays against. The leaves carry vitamin K and magnesium, and the deep color you see when they hit the oil is carotenoid pigment that the olive oil helps you absorb.
- Strained yogurt is thick because the whey has been drained off, which concentrates the protein and leaves it tart enough to cut through egg yolk. It also brings live cultures and a good amount of calcium in every spoonful.
- Cannellini beans go creamy at the center while holding their shape, and their soluble fiber is the slow kind that keeps this breakfast sitting comfortably for hours. Rinsing them well before they go in the pan gives you a cleaner bean flavor.
- Dill, parsley, garlic, and paprika bloomed in warm oil are what make the plate smell like something before you taste it. The paprika oil in particular reads as sweet and faintly smoky, and it is the last thing to hit the plate for exactly that reason.
- As you eat, notice how the cool yogurt meets the hot greens on the same fork, and let that contrast slow you down enough to finish the plate before you decide whether you want anything else.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use kale or collard greens in place of the chard?
Yes, with a longer cook. Kale wants five minutes rather than two and collards want closer to ten, so add them with the leek instead of at the end. Spinach is the one green that cannot be swapped in for the chard alone, since it collapses to almost nothing and leaves the pan wet.
My whites are still loose when the yolks look done. What went wrong?
The wells were too shallow. If the egg sits on top of the greens rather than down against the hot metal, the white cooks only from above and takes far longer than the yolk. Scrape each well right down to the pan and the whites will set from underneath at the same rate.
Can I get ahead on this the night before?
Most of it. Cook the greens and beans through the fourth step, cool them, and refrigerate. In the morning, warm them in the skillet for three minutes, make the wells, and bake. Mix the garlic yogurt the night before as well, and take it out of the refrigerator while the oven heats.
Is this enough to be the whole breakfast?
It is. Two eggs, a heavy pile of greens, beans, and a cup of yogurt across each plate makes a real meal that does not want anything alongside it. If you are feeding people who are used to bread with breakfast, a slice of whole wheat toast to wipe the plate is the traditional finish.