Ojja Merguez.
Tunisian Eggs in Spicy Pepper Sauce
عجة مرقاز · say it: OOZH-ah mer-GAZ
Ojja is the Tunisian skillet supper: a fierce red sauce of tomato, garlic, green pepper and harissa, thickened with slices of merguez sausage and finished with eggs stirred through until they set into soft, saucy curds. It is hot, oily in the way a good sauce should be, and built to be mopped rather than forked. Thirty minutes from cold pan to table, and the whole dish happens in one skillet that goes straight to the middle of the table with a stack of bread beside it.
- Gate
- TunisiaTunis
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Total time
- 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Status
- Easy
- Nutrition / serving · estimated
- Calories 520 kcal
- Protein 27 g
- Carbs 12 g
- Fat 41 g
- Fiber 4 g
- Sodium 910 mg
Why this recipe works.
- Merguez is browned first and its fat carries the sauce, which is why this tastes deeper than a plain tomato and egg pan.
- Harissa is fried into the oil rather than stirred in at the end, so the sauce is red all the way through instead of streaked.
- The egg method is spelled out precisely — the two-minute window between silky and rubbery is the only hard part.
- One pan, thirty minutes, and every ingredient except the sausage is a cupboard staple.
Ingredients.
13 itemsEquipment
- Wide heavy frying pan or skillet, ideally the one you will serve from
- Wooden spoon
Instructions.
Brown the merguez
Warm the olive oil in a wide pan over medium-high heat and lay in the merguez slices in a single layer. Fry 4–5 minutes, turning once, until the cut faces are crusted dark brown and the pan floor is slick with orange fat. Lift the sausage out and set it aside, leaving every drop of that fat behind.
Soften the peppers
Drop the pepper strips into the hot fat and cook for 6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the edges blister and the strips go floppy but still have some bite. Add the garlic and cook one minute more, just until it smells sweet and stops looking raw.
Tip If the garlic starts colouring, the pan is too hot — pull it off the heat for a few seconds.
Fry the harissa and tomato paste
Push the vegetables to one side, spoon the harissa and tomato paste into the clear space, and fry them in the fat for 90 seconds, stirring, until the colour deepens to brick and a rusty film starts sticking to the pan. Stir everything together.
Reduce the sauce
Tip in the tomatoes, caraway, coriander and water, season with salt and pepper, and simmer briskly for 10–12 minutes. It is ready when the sauce mounds on the spoon, the oil rises in orange pools at the edges, and a spoon dragged across the pan leaves a channel that fills back slowly.
Return the sausage and add the eggs
Stir the merguez back in with any juices and lower the heat until the sauce only just moves. Crack the eggs straight into the pan and stir them slowly through the sauce with a wooden spoon, cutting across the base every few seconds.
Pull it off early
Keep stirring for about 90 seconds, until the egg has set into soft curds streaked through the red sauce but still looks glossy and slightly wet. Take the pan off the heat immediately, scatter the parsley over, and carry it to the table with bread.
Tip The pan holds enough heat to finish the eggs on its own. Waiting until they look perfect on the burner guarantees they will be overdone in the bowl.
Tips from our kitchen.
- Cook the sauce down until it is thick enough to hold a channel when you drag a spoon across the pan. Watery sauce plus eggs gives you soup.
- Slice the merguez on a steep angle into thick coins so each piece keeps a browned face rather than crumbling into the sauce.
- Pull the pan off the heat when the eggs are still visibly underdone — they carry on setting in the hot sauce for a good minute after.
- Green peppers, not red. The slight bitterness of an underripe pepper is part of the flavour, and red peppers make the dish sweet.
- If your harissa is mild, add a second spoonful with the tomato rather than at the end, so it has time to lose its rawness.
- A splash of water midway keeps the sauce moving; a dry pan scorches the tomato paste and turns the whole thing bitter.
Substitutions.
- Merguez → Spicy lamb sausage, or 300 g minced lamb fried with a teaspoon of harissa and a pinch of caraway
- Merguez is widely sold frozen in halal butchers and French supermarkets. Chorizo is not a substitute — the smoked paprika sends the dish somewhere else entirely.
- Fresh tomatoes → 400 g tin of chopped tomatoes
- Outside tomato season the tin is the better choice. Cook it five minutes longer to drive off the extra liquid.
- Sausage entirely → Leave it out and add a second pepper plus a handful of chickpeas
- Plain ojja is common in Tunisian homes and needs an extra tablespoon of olive oil to make up for the missing sausage fat.
Variations.
- Ojja bil qawqa'
- Made with prawns instead of sausage, added in the last three minutes so they stay firm. A coastal favourite in Sfax and Mahdia.
- Ojja bil batata
- Cubes of potato fried in the pan before the sauce is built, turning the dish into something substantial enough to eat without bread.
- Chakchouka tunisienne
- The same base, but the eggs are cracked into hollows and left whole so the yolks stay runny under a lid.
Storage & reheating.
Ojja is best eaten within minutes of the eggs setting, and reheated egg goes rubbery and weeps water. If you expect leftovers, make the sauce and sausage base only, cool it and refrigerate for up to 3 days, then reheat a portion and add fresh eggs — this takes four minutes and gives you a proper plate rather than a warmed-over one. The base freezes for 3 months; the finished dish should not be frozen.
Serve with
Plenty of bread torn straight from the loaf, plus olives and a chopped cucumber salad on the side.
The story behind Ojja Merguez.
Ojja sits in the same family as the pepper-and-egg dishes found all round the Mediterranean, and Tunisians distinguish it from chakchouka by what happens to the eggs. In chakchouka the eggs are cracked in and left to poach whole in wells in the sauce; in ojja they are stirred, so the yolk breaks and enriches the sauce and the finished dish looks scrambled rather than nested. Cooks do not police the line strictly, and you will hear the words used loosely, but the stirring is the version most Tunisian home kitchens mean by ojja.
The origin of the wider chakchouka-shakshuka family is genuinely contested. Versions have long existed across the Maghreb — Tunisia and Libya both have strong claims — and the dish became internationally famous through Israeli cooking after North African Jewish communities, including Tunisia's, brought it with them in the twentieth century. There is no settled verdict on where it began, and anyone offering one is picking a side rather than reporting a fact. What is not in dispute is that the Tunisian version is the spiciest, because harissa goes in as a base ingredient rather than a garnish.
Merguez is the standard addition and the one that makes the dish a meal. Thin, deep red, made from lamb or a lamb-and-beef mix seasoned heavily with chilli and garlic, it releases a stained orange fat as it browns that becomes the cooking medium for everything else — this is one of the few dishes where you want the sausage fat rather than trying to drain it away. Other versions swap in prawns on the coast, brains in old-fashioned Tunis restaurants, or nothing at all, in which case ojja is a fast vegetarian dinner made entirely from things already in the kitchen.
Questions, answered.
What is the difference between ojja and shakshuka?
Mainly the eggs. Ojja has them stirred through the sauce so they set in soft curds and thicken it; chakchouka and shakshuka leave the eggs whole in hollows with the yolks runny. Tunisian ojja is also typically hotter, since harissa is part of the base rather than a condiment. In everyday speech the names do get used interchangeably.
What is merguez sausage made from?
Lamb, or a lamb and beef mixture, seasoned heavily with chilli, garlic and often harissa itself, stuffed into thin casings. It is North African rather than specifically Tunisian and is sold fresh or frozen in halal butchers and most French and Belgian supermarkets. It contains no pork.
How do I stop the eggs turning rubbery?
Lower the heat before the eggs go in and stop cooking early. Stir slowly with a wooden spoon for about a minute, and take the pan off the burner while parts of the egg still look wet and glossy — residual heat finishes them. Eggs cooked until they look done in the pan are already overcooked by the time they reach the table.
Can I make ojja less spicy without ruining it?
Yes. Halve the harissa and add a teaspoon of sweet paprika to keep the colour, or use only the milder large chillies if you make your own paste. Serve extra harissa on the side so anyone who wants the full version can add it. The garlic, caraway and tomato base still tastes distinctly Tunisian at low heat.
How many eggs should I use?
One per person for a side dish, or six for four people if this is the main course. More eggs make the dish denser and less saucy, so if you go above six for a standard pan, add an extra tomato as well to keep the balance right.
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Recipe by The DishRoute Kitchen · published August 20, 2026 · updated August 20, 2026