Perfect Roasted Eggplant

Here’s how to make the best roasted eggplant! Baking until tender makes for unreal flavor. Serve as a side dish or toss with pasta.

The best way to cook eggplant? Try this roasted eggplant! Take one bite and you’ll be singing its praises: it’s silky and tender, seasoned simply with garlic and basil. Serve it as an easy side dish, or toss it with pasta for a tasty dinner. It transforms into this Roasted Eggplant Pasta in a flash. This method works for diced eggplant or eggplant cut into large slices. It turns out so tasty, we’ve been making it on repeat for years. Ready to roast?

How to make roasted eggplant (diced or sliced)

This roasted eggplant is very easy to make: the hardest part is simply waiting for it to come out of the oven! This recipe gets the eggplant perfectly tender and charred. You can roast eggplant diced, like we have here, or slice it into rounds or long lengthwise pieces (planks). The result is the same either way! Here’s what to do:

• Chop: Cut 2 eggplants into 1-inch diced pieces, into round slices, or oblong slices.
• Mix with olive oil and salt: Mix with ¼ cup olive oil and ¾ teaspoon salt. Eggplant soaks up the oil in an instant, so mix it right as soon as the oil hits its flesh.
• Roast at 425 degrees: Roast for about 30 to 35 minutes until the eggplant is browned and tender. Because eggplant has so much water, it will deflate quite a bit. The roasted pieces come out much smaller!
• Flavor: Mix with grated garlic and basil, or other flavors of your choice!

How to cut eggplant in this recipe

What’s the best way to dice eggplant? In this roasted eggplant recipe, you’ll need to cut the veggie into 1-inch chunks. They’ll seem larger than you expect, but that’s okay: they shrink quite a bit while roasting. Here’s the basic method for how to cut eggplant:

1. Using a large chef’s knife, slice off the top and bottom of the eggplant.
2. Stand the eggplant up and cut thin slices lengthwise, 1-inch thick.
3. For diced eggplant, stack the slices and cut them into strips. Turn the strips and cut them crosswise to the desired size.

Is salting eggplant necessary?

Many eggplant recipes call for adding salt to the eggplant, then letting it drain for 1 hour before cooking a recipe. Conventional wisdom was that this helped to extract some of the bitterness from the eggplant. But if you’re like us, you’re starved for time already. Who has 1 hour to salt and drain their eggplant? Is this extra step really necessary?

After some research, guess what we found? Salting and draining eggplant is not necessary! According to Epicurious, this used to be standard practice with eggplants years ago 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!

Ways to serve roasted eggplant

This roasted eggplant is so full of flavor, you’ll want to make it for every meal! (We do.) The flavors are Mediterranean style, so it works especially well with meals with an Italian or Mediterranean vibe. Here are a few ways we’d serve it:

• As a side with pasta. Try it with fettuccine alfredo, baked rigatoni or vodka sauce pasta.
• In pasta! Try our roasted eggplant pasta with our best marinara sauce.
• On pizza. Throw roasted eggplant onto a cheese pizza for an even tastier pie.
• As planks served over a whole grain. Roast it as planks and cover with quinoa, like in our herbed quinoa with grilled eggplant.

More eggplant recipes

Here are a few more of our favorite eggplant recipes to serve this tasty veggie:

• Try our favorite classic recipe, Eggplant Parmesan
• Use eggplant for the crust in these Easy Eggplant Pizzas
• Make the Best-Ever Eggplant Meatballs, which have a surprisingly juicy texture
• Go for Eggplant Caponata, an Italian appetizer that’s bursting with flavor
• Opt for an Eggplant Sandwich with Tomato & Pesto

01

Eggplant Parmesan (Eggplant Parmigiana)

02

Easy Eggplant Pizza

03

Best-Ever Eggplant Meatballs

04

Eggplant Caponata

This roasted eggplant recipe is…

Vegetarian, vegan, plant-based, dairy-free, and gluten-free.

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