Eggplant is one of those vegetables you have to know how to cook correctly. But when you: it’s incredibly delicious! It’s used in lots of styles of cuisines, from Mediterranean to Asian. Here at A Couple Cooks, we’ve been on a hunt for the best ways to eat it. If you’ve got a few eggplant on hand you’re looking to use: you’ve come to the right place! Here’s a list of the our best eggplant recipes: from grilled to roasted, from doused in marinara sauce to spread with pesto in a sandwich. When it’s done right, it can be elegant and crowd pleasing.
And now…the best eggplant recipes!
How to cut eggplant
What’s the best way to cut eggplant? It depends on the recipe, but this vegetable is pretty easy to cut. In most recipes you’ll either slice it into rings, or dice it. Here’s the basic method for how to cut eggplant (and see below for a video!):
Do you really need to salt and drain eggplant?
If you’ve cooked eggplant recipes before, a recipe may have called to let the eggplant drain with salt on it for 1 hour to extract some of the bitterness from the eggplant. Is this extra step really necessary? According to Epicurious, it’s actually not! This used to be conventional practice with eggplants in the past because they were more bitter. Today’s eggplants are bred to be less bitter, so there’s no need to waste an hour salting the eggplant. Now you know!
What are Asian eggplant or Japanese eggplant?
Asian or Japanese eggplant is a variety of eggplant that is long and thin, instead of globe shaped like the eggplant used in Italian and Mediterranean style recipes. The skin is thin and it has a lightly sweet flavor. It’s harder to find at grocery stores, so look for Japanese eggplant at farmers markets or specialty stores. All of the recipes above except for the eggplant salad call for globe eggplant, but you can typically substitute Asian eggplant. Be aware that it is much smaller than a globe eggplant, so you’d have to use 2 or 3 to equal the same weight as 1 globe. 5 from 1 review
