Aubergine Parmigiana Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What do you eat with aubergine parmigiana? ›

She loves this aubergine parmigiana and wolfs it down. What is this? Serve it with garlic bread, potatoes or rice and salad to complete the meal. Try my easy garlic bread or extra delicious garlic pizza bread or hasselback potatoes.

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.

Modern eggplant has had bitterness nearly bred out of it, so many cooks have given up the practice. Salting the slices for eggplant Parmesan is not to prevent bitter flavors, but to season the eggplant itself and, at least in my experience, keep the eggplant from sucking up too much of the olive oil from frying.

Remember, this is eggplant parm, not sauce parm. You want to do the most to protect your eggplant. Salting it to remove moisture before it starts cooking is very important (and letting it squeeze out excess moisture beneath the weight of a heavy pot for an hour is crucial, too).

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.

Another argument in favor of salting claims that it draws moisture out of the eggplant's cells that will, in turn, block the absorption of oil during cooking. But we know from experience that a salted eggplant still soaks up quite a bit of oil. So, in the end, we're with Clee on this one: don't sweat it.

I tend to soak the slices in a bowl of water with a couple of tablespoon of salt for about 30-45 minutes. It doesn't have to do with bitterness, but I find that in doing this, the fried eggplant turns out less greasy," Jenkins says.

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 secret to great eggplant parmesan

And that is to eliminate entirely the breading step of the recipe you are most likely in possession of. Adding the breading means the eggplant slices spend too much time in the oil during browning and provide extra places for that oil to get sucked up.

Can I assemble eggplant parm the day before? ›

Making Eggplant Parmesan Ahead of Time

With that said, you can layer and assemble the eggplant parmesan in the baking dish, cover it, and refrigerate it overnight. From there, bake it as the recipe instructs, but you may need to add 10-15 minutes to the overall cook time.

Perhaps most important of all—the best way by far to enjoy Parmigiano Reggiano is always to break it into small rough-texture pieces. The eating experience is significantly more interesting because you get more cheese exposed to your tongue. The uneven surface allows you to experience the cheese's full complexity.

Wine Pairing with Eggplant Parmesan: Barbera or Sangiovese

Queue Italian Reds! Sangiovese wines like Chianti or Rosso di Montalcino are easy to find in stores, but a more fun option to pair with Eggplant Parmesan is Barbera, a grape coming out of the PIemonte region in Northwestern Italy.

Parmigiana, known as Parmigiana di Melanzane or Melanzane alla Parmigiana, is a classic Italian dish made with thinly sliced, floured and fried eggplant layered with tomato sauce and cheese and baked in the oven. Parmigiana made with a filling of eggplant is the earliest and still unique Italian version.

Wash the aubergine thoroughly.

Peel the skin with a vegetable peeler if you think it's wise – younger aubergine skin is fine to eat, but older, more ripened aubergine skin has a bitter taste. Cut off the stem and base, too. Leave the skin on if you are baking aubergine whole in the oven or roasting it on the grill.