24 Delicious Eggplant Recipes You Can Enjoy All Year Long (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to cooking eggplant? ›

Eggplants are known to absorb a lot of fat while cooking. A useful tip to prevent sogginess and greasiness is to salt sliced or diced eggplant and let it sit for an hour. This helps to draw out moisture. Next, rinse and drain any liquid from the sliced eggplant, then pat dry before cooking.

One of the most popular was the long, thin, purple eggplant from Taiwan known as Ping Tung. This is an exceptional eggplant with sweet, pleasant tasting flesh. The plants are incredibly prolific and produce throughout the entire season. They are more disease resistant than other eggplants.

The Bottom Line. Eggplant is a high-fiber, low-calorie food that is rich in nutrients and comes with many potential health benefits. From reducing the risk of heart disease to helping with blood sugar control and weight loss, eggplants are a simple and delicious addition to any healthy diet.

Soak eggplant slices or cubes in milk for about 30 minutes before cooking. The milk not only tempers the bitterness, but it actually makes for eggplant that is extra creamy, since the vegetable acts like a sponge and soaks up a good amount of milk in its flesh.

In our summer trials, Millionaire had ripe fruit before many of the other eggplant varieties were even flowering! The healthy, upright plants produce extraordinary harvests of deep purple, slender fruit, 8 inches long. This exquisite Japanese variety is tender and delicious with a minimal seed cavity.

There is no sex difference among eggplant fruits. The confusion may have come from the fact that eggplant flowers have male and female parts. Mary Keith, a nutrition educator with University of Florida Extension says: “Please, don't waste any sleep over trying to remember which one is which.

Eggplants come with antioxidants and other possible benefits related to heart and brain health. They are also a low-carb option with fiber. There are risks of eating eggplants, like potential allergic reactions, kidney stone formation, and increased inflammation.

Signs That Eggplant Is Bad

Lusterless and shriveling exteriorA ripe, safe-to-eat eggplant looks really shiny and has tight, smooth skin. If your eggplant has lost its luster and/or looks wrinkly, it's past its prime and no longer good to cook with. Keep an eye out for brown spots around your eggplant, too.

Inspite of all the health benefits that eggplant provides, consumption of this vegetable in large quantities can have some harmful effects on your body. Nasunin, present in eggplant, is a phytochemical which can bind with iron and remove it from the cells. The oxalates in this vegetable can cause stones in the kidney.

eggplant has exerted an antihypertensive effect via ACE inhibitory activity. Therefore, eggplant has been suggested as useful food for the management of hypertension and its complications in daily life (Figure 2). ...

Is eggplant good or bad for cholesterol? ›

Chlorogenic acid, also found in eggplant, is an antioxidant that not only helps prevent cancer but is also antibacterial and antiviral. Chlorogenic acid may also help to lower LDL cholesterol levels ('bad cholesterol). High levels of LDL cholesterol are a risk factor for heart disease.

Older recipes call for salting eggplant to draw out the bitter juices, but today's eggplants are less bitter (unless very large), so salting is largely unnecessary. It will, however, help the spongy flesh absorb less oil and crisp up like a dream.

“The absorptiveness of eggplant can be reduced by collapsing its spongy structure before frying,” he writes. Which you can do by microwaving it before frying (!) or salting slices that'll draw out the water and close up those air pockets, giving you a firmer flesh to work with.

While the skin of a small young eggplant is edible, the skin becomes bitter on larger or older eggplants and should be peeled. When in doubt, the answer to, "Do you peel eggplant before cooking?" is yes, peel it. Use a vegetable peeler or paring knife to remove the skin.