Lountza me Avga Recipe (Cypriot Smoked Pork Loin with Eggs)

Lountza is the cured and smoked pork loin of Cyprus. The meat is salted, marinated in red wine, rolled in crushed coriander seed and then smoked, which gives it a flavor somewhere between good bacon and a mild ham, with the coriander coming through at the end. Fried in its own rendering fat until the edges crisp, then used as the cooking fat for eggs in the same pan, it makes one of the most straightforward and most loved Cypriot breakfasts.

There is barely a recipe here, which is exactly the point. Buy lountza sliced reasonably thick, from a Cypriot or Greek delicatessen, and the technique is simply knowing to fry the meat first, alone, until it has given up its fat, before the eggs go anywhere near the pan.

It sits alongside strapatsada and halloumi with eggs as one of the standard savory breakfasts across Cyprus and Greece, eaten any time of day rather than strictly in the morning.

Key preparation steps

1. Fry the lountza slices alone first, until the fat renders and the edges crisp.
2. Push the meat to one side of the pan.
3. Crack the eggs directly into the rendered fat.
4. Cook the eggs to your liking and serve straight from the pan.

What is lountza?

Lountza (Λούντζα, said LOON-dzah) is a whole pork loin cured the Cypriot way. According to the Cyprus Tourism Organisation, the meat is salted, marinated in red wine and dried, then rolled in coriander seeds and smoked in a specially built chimney over wood from aromatic bushes and trees. Recipes differ from village to village in how long each stage takes, and some home recipes add a little cumin with the coriander.

There are two kinds. Smoked lountza is the one most people know and the one sold in supermarkets. Sun-dried lountza skips the chimney and is dried in the sun and air instead.

The spelling wanders, because people write it the way they hear it. Lountza, lounza, lountsa and luntza all mean the same thing.

How Cypriots eat lountza

Lountza is eaten cold, fried or grilled. Cold, it is sliced thin and put out on a meze plate. Grilled, it goes on the barbecue in thicker slices beside sheftalia and souvla.

The best-known way is the halloumi and lountza sandwich. Both are grilled or fried, layered in a pitta or a split roll with tomato, and eaten hot, so the halloumi is soft and the lountza is crisp. It is a common café and snack-bar order all over the island.

And then there is lountza me avga, the breakfast below, which is the way most Cypriot families cook it at home.

Lountza and other Greek cured pork

Several Greek islands have their own cured pork, and they get mixed up. Cretan apaki is the one people most often confuse with lountza. Apaki is marinated in vinegar rather than wine and is usually pan-fried in strips, while lountza is a whole cured loin sliced like ham.

None of them is the same as pastourma, which is coated in a thick, spicy paste and has a much stronger flavor.

Buying lountza

Lountza is sold sliced, usually a little thicker than bacon, from Greek or Cypriot delicatessens and some larger supermarkets with a good deli counter. It should look pale pink with a visible ring of fat and smell faintly smoky rather than sharply cured. Vacuum-packed, it keeps a long time, which makes it an easy thing to bring home from Cyprus.

In the US, look for it at Greek and Cypriot delis and online shops that import from Cyprus. If you cannot find genuine lountza, a good quality smoked pork loin bacon, often sold as Canadian bacon or back bacon, cut thick, is the closest reasonable substitute, though the flavor will be milder and less distinctly smoked.

Why the meat goes in first, alone

Lountza has enough fat running through it to render properly in a dry pan over a few minutes, and that rendered fat becomes the cooking fat for the eggs. Adding oil defeats the purpose, since the whole appeal is eggs that have taken on the specific flavor of the smoked pork fat.

Fry the slices over a medium heat until the fat has visibly rendered and the edges have started to crisp and color, which takes about four to five minutes. Only then does anything else go into the pan.

Cooking the eggs

Push the lountza to one side, or lift it out and keep it warm if your skillet is small, and crack the eggs directly into the fat left behind. Fry them exactly as you would any other fried eggs, to soft or firm yolks as you prefer.

Return the lountza to the pan alongside the cooked eggs for the final minute simply to bring everything back up to serving temperature together, and serve straight from the pan with bread to mop up the yolk and fat. On Crete the same idea is made with eggs fried in staka, and you can swap the lountza for loukaniko sausage.

What matters in this dish