Use Up Excess Marinara Sauce By Adding It To Your Everyday Breakfast

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Whether you're making marinara from scratch or using your favorite bottled pasta sauce, you don't have to repurpose leftover sauce on yet another pasta dinner. Instead, use up excess marinara sauce by adding it to eggs for a comforting and savory breakfast.

As one of the most versatile foods, rich and buttery eggs will pair with any ingredient. And eggs and tomatoes are a pretty well-known pairing in global cuisines; consider the Chinese tomato and egg stir fry, Mexican huevos rancheros, or Middle Eastern shakshuka. Tomatoes may be a Mexican-origin crop, but Italians have taken the humble fruit to culinary heights by transforming it into an earthy, herby marinara sauce for pizza, pasta, polenta, and, yes, eggs. The Italians have long blended marinara sauce into a peasant-dish egg scramble known as uovo all'inferno or eggs in purgatory. Eggs in purgatory is similar to shakshuka, consisting of eggs poached in marinara sauce with a sauteed base of onions, garlic, and peppers.

However, you can also transform marinara sauce and eggs into an even easier breakfast scramble using the same ingredients. Simply saute onion, bell peppers, and garlic in a pan, add the leftover marinara sauce with a few seasonings, and finally stir in a few eggs to scramble in the bubbling marinara foundation. The tangy, sweet, and savory marinara sauce with the creamy eggs is a healthy and well-rounded breakfast that you'll want to make on repeat.

Scrambles and poached eggs aren't the only iterations for a marinara pairing. Yet another way to prepare eggs and marinara sauce is to pour marinara sauce over a freshly baked frittata, stuffed with potatoes, mushrooms, ricotta salata, and spinach. Whether you're poaching, scrambling, or baking eggs with marinara sauce, small additions will take this humble breakfast dish to the next level. For example, bring out the Italian flavors with the help of herbs like oregano, thyme, basil, and parsley. Or try this Italian seasoning blend from McCormick, if you'd rather not buy dried herbs separately.

Garnish eggs in purgatory with fresh basil leaves for a pop of color and freshness. Bring a nutty and salty element to eggs and marinara with a hearty sprinkling of parmesan cheese or pecorino romano. Make egg and marinara scramble extra decadent with the addition of ricotta cheese. Or cook up an extra hearty breakfast by bringing crumbly breakfast sausage into the mix. Better yet, Italian sausage is the ultimate Italian-influenced protein to keep eggs and marinara feeling like it's from the motherland.

No egg and marinara breakfast is complete without toasted bread to sop up all that flavorful sauce. We recommend types of bread with crispy, crunchy crusts like sourdough, ciabatta, and baguettes. And to really up your breakfast game, serve eggs in purgatory over a mound of cheesy, creamy polenta.