How to add more flavor to your eggs by cooking them in pesto

• Pesto offers a savory alternative to using oil when making eggs and helps elevate the flavor profile.
• Heat your pesto in a pan before cracking your eggs directly in.
• Put your pesto eggs onto a piece of toast for breakfast, or rice for lunch and dinner.

When frying your morning egg, you typically want to use a few drops of olive oil in your pan to make it crispier. Using pesto as an alternative to oil, however, can help take your breakfast to a whole new territory of texture and taste.

Pesto eggs - as they've been dubbed on TikTok, where the quick and tasty hack was popularized - is a dish that utilizes the oil already in pesto to fry eggs. While eggs alone are savory, bringing in pesto adds bitter, sweet, and piquant notes that round out the flavor profile without too much heavy lifting.

"Pesto is very complex, but well-balanced just by itself. It has a very unique flavor," says Sean Womack, VP of marketing and innovation at Happy Egg Co. "And it's already made. So it's not just like [...] you've got to pull a whole bunch of other ingredients out."

Quick tip: Womack also suggests using other flavored oils to kick up your eggs like chili oil, avocado oil, or sun-dried tomato pesto.

How to make pesto eggs

1. Heat your pan. You want to keep it on low heat, medium at the highest. Higher heat has the potential to burn the herbs and nuts in the pesto.
2. Scoop some pesto into your pan. The amount you use is up to your personal preference - be as generous as you want. "I like a lot of it in there because I want the egg resting in this giant mound of pesto," Womack says.
3. Let the pesto heat up in the pan for a little bit. Your pesto will sit in your pan as a blob when you initially put it in. Womack says to swirl it around the pan until it begins moving and sliding around the same way a piece of melted butter might. This means the oil in your pesto is heated up. "It's okay to crisp the basil. But if you burn it, you're not gonna like the flavor," Womack says.
4. Crack your egg directly into the pan. Allow the egg to fry on medium heat until the whites are cooked all the way through and your egg has reached the desired level of doneness. If you want to speed up the cooking process, Womack recommends placing a lid over the egg to help trap the heat and cook the top.

Quick tip: You can also make scrambled pesto eggs. Simply pour your scramble mixture into your nest of pesto, the same way you would crack a fried egg into it. The level of heat you use on scrambled eggs will vary depending on how you want the curd to turn out - if you're aiming for creamy then use a lower heat, but if you want something firmer then use higher heat.

What to serve with pesto eggs

Pesto possesses a dynamic flavor profile that carries almost anything it's paired with. But keep in mind what flavors are already present and which ones you can bring in with additional ingredients, says Womack.

For a topping, Womack recommends a chili oil or Tabasco sauce to add a pepper-based spice. As for the base, you can keep it pretty simple.

"It's sort of begging for a piece of toast," says Womack. Toast is a tried and true companion to eggs, and there's certainly no exception when pesto is involved. Layer on a spread like mashed avocado or goat cheese to make things even more decadent. Womack also suggests a bed of rice if you're looking for something better suited for lunch or dinner.

Insider's takeaway

Pesto eggs have fast become a delicious breakfast staple that you can easily whip up in the morning. Simply heat a pan, add however much pesto you prefer, crack your egg in the pesto, and cook. Elevate the flavor of your dish even further by adding a spicy topping and a filling base.