Cooking eggplant/aubergine?

alheimurinn · April 2011

Hello - I picked up an eggplant at the store today. We've decided to have pasta with tomato sauce for dinner, and I wanted to add it to the sauce. Most information I'm finding online says to 'salt' it prior to use... is this absolutely necessary? Even if most of the salt washes off, I still don't want all of the added sodium. Can I just fry it up with some bell pepper, or is this not something I should skip? Any tips/suggestions on how to easily prepare and cook eggplant would be much appreciated, thank you!

afteil · April 2011

The salt is generally used on the eggplant first and then you let it stand for 15-20 mins. This draws out the water in the eggplant. If you skip this step, the amount of water in it would make it fairly difficult to sautee. If you wanted to completely omit this step- try roasting it instead, if you have a cooling rack or something that is safe to use in the oven cook it on top of that (with a baking sheet under of course), so that any water that comes out of the eggplant will go underneath on the baking sheet and not where the eggplant actually is.

chefchazz · April 2011

larger eggplants are a little bitter. the salt will pull the bitter liquid out. i understand about not wanting to add sodium so cut alittle piece off and see how you like it. in the future, buy the japanese version(they look like purple bananas). salting is necessary.

dwarfer22 · April 2011

I don't salt my eggplants but I do find that they do cook up fairly mushy. a recipe I have for them calls for them to be chopped, salted and left in a colander to let the water come out. I'm not that picky so I just chop and cook. It's up to you but I have heard that getting the water out helps.

alheimurinn · April 2011

Thanks for the info, everyone... I gave in and salted it haha. Any idea if it will absorb all of the salt? I plan to rinse it off before cooking, but will a lot of it stay in the flesh?

Cooking eggplant/aubergine?

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