Easy Cheesy Eggplant Bake Recipe (Vegetarian Casserole) - Home & Plate (2024)

FAQs

Does eggplant need to be soaked before baking? ›

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.

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.

A raw eggplant is crunchy and flavorless, like a raw potato. When it's cooked, “it should turn fully tender, all the flesh should be somewhat custardy. If you have to, hammer it a bit, knock it around, let it start to collapse.”

Serving Suggestions

This eggplant Parmesan recipe is hearty enough to be a meal on its own, but if you're looking for something to go with it, you can't go wrong with pasta (or spaghetti squash or zucchini noodles!) or good crusty bread.

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.

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 oil still left in the eggplant tissues contributes to the soft, buttery texture that's so appealing. Oil also carries the essence of added herbs and spices, so that eggplant dishes can become rich with the aromas and heady flavors of onions, peppers, anchovies, parsley, garlic, and lemon juice.

Why do you soak eggplant in water and vinegar? Soaking eggplant in water and vinegar helps remove some of the vegetable's natural bitterness. This step also helps preserve some of the skin's color so it stays a vibrant purple even after cooking.

Not cooking it in enough fat.

The flesh of eggplant is like a sponge — it will immediately soak up any liquid it touches. Drizzle a spoonful of olive oil over cubes before roasting them and you'll see that it's already soaked through the flesh before the baking sheet even gets into the oven.

Larger, more mature eggplants can be more bitter, typically because their seeds are larger and seeds tend to hold on to the most bitter flavors.

Why is my baked eggplant tough? ›

Undercooking It

Undercook them and you'll be left with a bitter-tasting veggie that has the texture of a cotton ball, says Norton. "Most recipes can accurately predict how much time it will take for eggplants to fully cook. Go for a 15 minute minimum with thin slices of tender eggplant varieties," she says.

The peel of an eggplant is completely edible. However, as the eggplant grows bigger and matures, the peel may become tough and bitter. People often prefer to peel larger eggplants because of this, but smaller eggplants do just fine unpeeled. It ends up being a matter of personal preference.

Eggplant parmesan tends to be lighter on the stomach and is considered to be more healthy. Eggplant is also less expensive. Restaurants find that it is a much cheaper option for guests. In addition, eggplant parmesan isn't a great meal when it comes to leftovers.

Many recipes call for salting and rinsing eggplant before cooking it to draw out its bitterness.

Eggplant is about 80 to 90 percent water, so when you put them in the oven they need space to evaporate all that water and caramelize properly," says Covarrubias. Give them a toss halfway through the cooking process to make sure they're cooked evenly, too.