Dried eggplants, what to cook with them

Many housewives prepare eggplants for the winter, but they do this by drying them. It is best to dry the “little blue” ones in the oven; dishes made from such a vegetable will resemble dishes with mushrooms.

Any food made from dried eggplant contains a large amount of nutrients and vitamins. A vegetable dish can decorate a winter table and add a subtle touch of summer mood.

Few people know that dried eggplants are an excellent preparation for delicious dishes and an excellent cure for periodontal disease. From dried eggplant you can make infusions for mouth rinsing and powder for cleaning teeth.

To make a tasty and healthy dish from dried eggplants, they should be dried properly. You can use an electric dryer for this. First, the vegetable is cut into rings and dried until brittle. In winter you can prepare salads. If the dried vegetable is ground in a blender, the powder can be used as a seasoning.

Dried eggplants are soaked in water or milk, then squeezed well and fried in oil or lightly boiled. Eggplants can be dried with or without peel. Korean eggplants are very tasty. The vegetable is lightly fried, sautéed onions, red hot peppers, garlic, vinegar and ground coriander are added.

Dried eggplant

Friday, September 14, 2021

Drying eggplants! I read a lot of flattering reviews about this method of preparing blueberries for the winter and couldn’t resist - I prepared them. Dried eggplants are stored similarly to dried mushrooms, apples and other fruits until the next season. When properly processed, these little blue ones, they say, turn out no worse than fresh eggplants. Shall we check?

You can also make a powder from such a preparation, which will become a flavorful addition to many dishes. Completely dried and brittle pieces are placed in a coffee grinder or blender and crushed to a powder. By the way, you can look at the recipes for mushroom powder and vegetable seasoning for the winter - they will certainly come in handy.

How to properly store dried eggplants? First of all, choose containers: bags made of thick fabric, glassware with a sealed lid, or cardboard boxes. Many people like to store dried fruits in ordinary three-liter jars, which must be thoroughly washed and dried in advance. True, if even one incompletely dried eggplant slice gets into the jar, it is very likely that mold will appear. I recommend buying or sewing bags made of thick fabric, which need to be soaked in a strong saline solution for 1 hour and then dried completely. This way the slices can breathe and insects will not get inside. We store dried eggplants in a dry and dark place - a kitchen cabinet, for example.

Ingredients:

Cooking step by step:

To prepare this vegetable preparation, we only need fresh eggplants. For drying, choose fruits of any size, but preferably not overripe ones, otherwise you will eat only the seeds.

There may be several ways to cut eggplants, but in any case, wash the fruits thoroughly and wipe them dry. Cut off the stalks. The first option is to cut into round pieces, approximately 1 centimeter thick. Whether to remove the skin or not is up to you.

Option 2. Peel the eggplants - it is most convenient to cut off the thin skin using a vegetable peeler.

Then cut the peeled eggplants into cubes or just small slices.

Option 3. Dry the peeled eggplants in the form of plates, so that later they can be cut with scissors.

You can also dry eggplants in different ways: in a special dryer, in the oven (at a temperature of no more than 100 degrees with a gradual decrease) or in the fresh air. The first method is the most convenient in all respects; eggplants can burn in the oven (so keep an eye on them constantly), and dry and warm weather in the fall is quite problematic. I prefer the first option, that is, a dryer for vegetables, fruits and berries. Place the eggplant pucks in a single layer in the dryer tray.

Place vegetable slices in an even layer.

And eggplant slices too. I took so many photos intentionally to show how fresh vegetables change compared to dried ones.

Dry the eggplants in the dryer until they lose as much moisture as possible. That is, the dried pieces should be slightly flexible or even brittle (in the second case, we will make a powder out of them). In fact, eggplants dry very quickly - mine were ready after 3 hours.

They noticeably decrease in size.

This is especially noticeable on eggplant slices.

From just 1 kilogram of prepared eggplants, I got only 102 grams of dried ones.

How to use dried eggplant? Add them to first courses (soups and borscht) directly in dried form - you will get a pleasant taste, like mushroom. Slices can be added to stews and other stewed vegetables. Try making a carrot-style salad in Korean (boil eggplant strips for 3-4 minutes, squeeze, cut thinly and fry in oil). In general, don't be afraid to experiment in the kitchen. In the comments, share your experience: whether you make this preparation or not, and also what dishes you prepare from dried eggplants. Cook for your health and bon appetit, friends!

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Dried eggplant dishes

If anyone has forgotten after many years of publication of this section in the magazine, we have “4x4 cooking”. But although we prepare our dishes far from civilization, we do it without the use of powders and canned food. It’s just that the situation of a long-distance car trip through wild spaces - forests, steppes, deserts, tundras, tropics - and different climatic zones imposes some restrictions on cooking methods, choice of ingredients and serving possibilities.

But, as we have already demonstrated many times, with a certain amount of imagination, all these obstacles can be overcome quite easily. In both cold and hot weather, without a stove or refrigerator, you can and should prepare delicious and beautiful dishes: you just need to think about the ingredients in advance - perhaps several months before the trip!

BASIC PRINCIPLES There are delicious foods that are not afraid of anything and practically do not spoil. It’s strange, but we completely forgot about them. These are dried vegetables.

I suggest drying the eggplants yourself during the season or, for example, wilting the tomatoes. This is done simply and quickly: we buy ten kilograms without removing the skin, cut it as you like (you can lengthwise, into plates, you can into pieces) and dry it at a low temperature in the oven. We get the ideal product for any hike, from which you can prepare a dozen different dishes, whether it’s hot or cold. It’s the same with tomatoes, only you’ll have to tinker a little longer, but you can eat them just like that, “Italian style,” with bread and olive oil – the taste is magical!

Onion - in length. Cut the onion to the middle and then cut into rings. They will straighten out immediately in the pan!

You can also buy already dried eggplants and tomatoes, especially in the southern regions. The main thing is to pay attention to them. In Turkey, I even saw bunches of eggplants, dried whole, in the form of hollow vessels, which are very convenient to stuff with anything.

We will make the most primitive, but very beautiful, satisfying and, most importantly, tasty dishes from eggplants that do not require time and serious expenditure of thermal energy.

DRINKS Cabernet or merlot are great - at least in Italy they go very well with all types of pasta. But this is in the summer, of course... And in winter, in the cold, among the fir trees, I would recommend, oddly enough, warm white Cuban rum! The dish is already 3D, but the aroma of the tropics will simply explode it!

ADVIСE

Cook the pasta a minute or two less than the time indicated on the package, that is, more than slightly undercooked. It will still end up in the pan.

While the eggplants are being prepared one way or another, we cut the onion into long ribbons - it’s simple: we make an incision with a sharp knife from the middle to the edge of a large onion, and then cut it into rings 4 millimeters wide. The rings will straighten out quickly in the frying pan.

Cut the peppers lengthwise into thin strips. In general, peppers - an optional, but very tasty and beautiful ingredient - can be replaced, depending on the season and circumstances, with anything you like: zucchini, for example, or the same sun-dried tomatoes. There are only three main ingredients in the dish: eggplant, onion, pasta.

Of all the variety of pasta, it is better to take not long pasta - they will be woven into a ball with onions and eggplants - and not thin vermicelli, stars and similar little things that will boil and get lost, but short dense forms: feathers, fusilli (such curls), large horns - they will effectively defuse all the other “lengths” of this dish and give it volume.

Sequentially place chopped eggplants, onions, peppers, a couple of laurel leaves and sour cream into the fire pan. Fry over high heat until cooked, then add the cooked pasta to the pan and stir for a few minutes without removing from the heat.

Korean salads

Korean salads differ from ordinary ones in that the dressing recipe often uses hot peppers and vinegar. It is the spicy dressing that gives salads a characteristic taste, for which we love the well-known Korean carrots. But it turned out that in this way you can prepare not only vegetable salads, but also meat, mushroom or seafood salads. Korean salads must be steeped before serving so that the ingredients are soaked in a mixture of spices, vinegar and vegetable oil.

Korean goose gizzards with carrots

It is not very easy to prepare a tasty dish from goose stomachs. But if you process them correctly, you will get tender and soft meat. According to this recipe, boiled goose gizzards combined with carrots and spices produce lard that tastes extraordinary.

Pumpkin in Korean

Homemade Korean pumpkin recipe will appeal to all lovers of spicy Korean salads. The cooking principle is the same as for Korean carrots. But the taste of pumpkin is milder than carrots. Korean pumpkin salad is served as an appetizer or side dish.

Korean style carrots (carrot-cha)

The main ingredients of this salad are carrots, sugar, salt, vinegar, vegetable oil and red hot pepper. In fact, Korean carrots are not cooked in Korea. The dish appeared in the Soviet Union among the “Koryo-saram” (Soviet Koreans), way out.

Squid salad with Korean carrots

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Korean fern salad

Bracken fern grows almost everywhere. Young shoots and roots of bracken contain many useful substances, including carotenoids. Young shoots or rachis are commonly used as food by residents of the Far East and Asian countries. At.

Korean spicy carrots

Spicy carrots in Korean are loved by many. The salad recipe is simple; spicy carrots are prepared quickly from the simplest and most inexpensive ingredients. By the way, spicy carrots are especially useful during the off-season, as they are a good preventive remedy.

Korean zucchini and carrot salad

Making a Korean-style zucchini and carrot salad is very simple. You just need to grate the vegetables and add spices, which you select based on your taste preferences. It can be dried herbs, coriander, and for those who like it spicy, red hot.

How to eat dried eggplant?

Drying food in the Isidri dryer is not difficult. You can dry everything on it in the excitement of your life: peppers and eggplants, carrots, and even cabbage leaves! But we haven’t yet learned how to cook from these uniquely healthy dried foods, we’re not used to it. Will learn?

They say that dried food makes dishes just as tasty as fresh food. I decided to check. I took 2 identical eggplants.

One was dried, having previously been cut into circles, the other was not. By the way, the process of drying the eggplant took only 2 hours! At the same time, the product shrunk in diameter.

In the photo on the left are eggplants that have been dried, and on the right - without drying, they are larger.

Then the dried eggplant was soaked in water. According to the recommendations, I only had 1 hour and 20 minutes. If you soak it in milk, it will be tastier, but in our experiment, the dried vegetable, compared to the fresh one, lacks water—let’s not deviate from the experiment! When soaked, the eggplant regained its flexibility; it became like a sponge that had absorbed water. But the diameter did not return to its previous size.

Meanwhile, I cut the raw vegetable into rings of the same thickness that I cut the second one before drying. And then they were filled in the same way according to the pizza principle: a piece of sausage, a tomato ring, greased with mayonnaise-tomato sauce, sprinkled with grated cheese and - into the oven, until the cheese was baked into an appetizing golden crust!

Are your mouth watering yet? Then I’ll tell you further: the taste of baked eggplants in both cases turned out to be worthy of the best feasts! Only the consistency differed: in the control it was very tender, such that it was necessary to put it on plates very carefully. And for an experienced one, it’s tougher. So I had to chew a little more. Apparently, the recommended soaking time must still be observed. Or remove the blue skin. Although my son noted that he liked the dried ones better, and by dinner I was left with only the control tidbits on the plate!

What we have: the taste and appearance are equally wonderful. Consistency is in favor of raw (although this can be adjusted). But the fact that for such a dish in winter we will have to buy expensive vegetables of unknown origin, and in summer we don’t know how to store eggplants for the winter, tips the scales in favor of a new method of preparation.

So dry it to your health! And we’ll figure out how to eat it deliciously!

Dried eggplants are a simple and inexpensive way to preserve them for the winter.

Drying vegetables is perhaps the cheapest and easiest, and also the least labor-intensive way to preserve them for the winter. The blanks take up little space, as a result of which they do not require special storage facilities.

You can dry vegetables outdoors, in electric dryers, or in a microwave oven. However, the easiest way is oven drying. With this method of harvesting, the moisture from the vegetables slowly disappears, while dietary fiber and vitamins are perfectly preserved. Using the last method, let's prepare dried eggplants.

And in winter, when fresh eggplants are sold at incredible prices in supermarkets, you can prepare delicious dishes with dried fruits. Just pour boiling water over the eggplants, and when they are steamed, squeeze them lightly and prepare your favorite dishes. By the way, dishes made from dried eggplant taste like dishes with mushrooms.

Note to the owner:

The season for harvesting dried eggplants is August-September.
You can also air dry the eggplants. To do this, wash the fruits well and dry them. Remove the stalks and cut the fruits lengthwise into slices at least 1 cm thick. Make a hole in the center of each slice. String the slices onto a strong thread so that they do not touch each other and hang to dry in a cool, dry place.
Ready eggplants should resemble dried fruit. Before cooking, pour boiling water over the eggplants, leave for half an hour, and then cook as usual.

Ingredients:

For 1 baking tray for a standard gas oven:

Medicine for hypertension

Dried eggplants can be prepared not only to enjoy them in winter, but also to alleviate the condition of certain diseases, for example, hypertension and gout.

Powder made from dried eggplant skin is a good remedy for hypertension. Take 1 teaspoon before meals. The same powder will be useful for rinsing weak gums. Make a solution - 1 tbsp for 1 glass of hot water. powder and 1 tsp. sea salt.

If desired, even residents of small apartments can easily prepare an impressive amount of their favorite vegetable for the winter. Drying eggplants is not a complicated process at all, but with the onset of cold weather, how much fun it will be to try dishes that are usually available only in the summer.

How to cook dried eggplants in an electric dryer and how to use them?

Autumn is the time of ripening of seasonal vegetables and fruits. Do you want to enjoy delicious and healthy eggplant dishes even in winter? Then prepare this product in advance. Dried eggplants retain almost all useful microelements, which is why this method of harvesting is very popular. Use the simple recipes from this article to stock up on vegetables for the winter and learn how to cook them properly.

Dried eggplants: prepare them in an electric dryer

The first step is to choose vegetables suitable for drying. Give preference to medium-sized fruits with thin skin. Do not buy overripe eggplants, as such vegetables contain too many hard grains that spoil the entire taste of the product. Vegetables need to be washed well, peeled (optional), cut into strips of medium thickness. Place the workpiece on the tray of the electric dryer and turn on the device at 50-60 degrees.

Additional use of spices and marinades will allow you to cook vegetables with different flavors.

To prevent food from burning and dry evenly, you need to periodically stir it and raise or lower the tray.

Dried eggplants for the winter in an electric oven

If you don’t have a special electric dryer, don’t get upset. Eggplants can even be dried in an electric oven. The process of creating such vegetable preparations can be divided into several main stages.

Wash the vegetables, dry them, cut them into equal strips. It is important that the pieces are the same size, then they will dry equally.

Place the eggplants on a baking sheet and place in an oven preheated to 200 degrees.

After 60 minutes, reduce the temperature to 100 degrees and wait another 4 hours.

Place the finished products in a glass jar with a lid or a fabric bag. This will help preserve the aroma and taste of the vegetable for a long time.

Recipes for dishes with dried eggplants

Use dried “blues” to please your loved ones with a healthy and tasty stew in winter. Before preparing this dish, eggplants need to be soaked in warm water for 4-5 hours. If you don't have that much time, just boil the vegetables for 15 minutes.

To create vegetable stew you will need:

All vegetables need to be washed, peeled and chopped. Fry onions, peppers and eggplants in vegetable oil until half cooked. Place in a saucepan with thick walls, add potatoes cut into small slices, tomato paste and a little meat broth. Simmer the dish over low heat until cooked, serve in portioned plates, sprinkle with herbs on top.

Now you know what to cook with dried eggplants and what to cook with them. Vegetables contain many nutrients that do not disappear even when dried. Use the tips from this article to make high-quality preparations for the winter and please your family with an original dish.

Characteristics

Dried eggplant is an excellent base for snacks and is a staple ingredient in many Chinese, Japanese and Korean dishes. They can be added to salads and gravies, and can also be used as a bacon substitute in classic sandwiches (lettuce + bacon + tomato). This is an extremely convenient option for those following a vegetarian diet.

In addition to its great taste, eggplants are also a sure remedy for diseases such as arthritis, rheumatism and atherosclerosis. They contain potassium salts, so older adults are especially advised to include these vegetables in their diet to prevent age-related heart disease.