For every novice cook, cooking is like a lottery game: you can never say with confidence that the dish will turn out delicious, because there are products whose taste can be spoiled simply by choosing the wrong way of pre-processing.
That is why many novice culinary experts introduce the most common eggplant into a stupor.
Do I need to peel eggplant? How to clean eggplant?
What can you cook from them? All these questions haunt the debutants in the field of cooking.
Do eggplants need to be peeled or left to peel?
Surprisingly, each person should give an answer to this question for himself. Eggplant is not at all necessary to peel. This is done in order to reduce the bitterness in the dish, as there are a lot of spicy and bitter substances in the composition of the eggplant peel. In addition, there is another way to remove the bitterness from the product - just soak the chopped pieces in a salt solution.
The first option is much easier than the second, and takes less time. That is why most people simply peel the peel from the vegetable, instead of soaking it. Sometimes for cooking you have to minimize bitterness, and for this you need to cut out the eggplant seeds if it is overripe. Fortunately, these are rare cases: if the eggplant is fresh, then its seeds do not have a very pronounced spicy taste, so they can be left inside.
If you are not accustomed to too spicy and bitter dishes, it is recommended that you peel the eggplants before cooking or cut them into discs and fry them with the peel, but peel the ready-made eggplants before serving. If your goal is tender stew or caviar, then clean the vegetables before cooking.
Instructions "How to clean eggplant"
There is nothing complicated about peeling eggplant. They must first be washed, and then deal with the vegetable, as well as with ordinary potatoes. If you have enough young eggplant, then peeling it will be very easy. You just need to follow the plan, performing step by step:
• Dry a wet, thoroughly washed eggplant with a towel.
• Remove the top of the vegetable on which the stem is located.
• If there are any rotten places on the fruit, first cut them out, and then proceed to clean the entire eggplant.
• Put the knife to the top and slowly lead from one end to the other, cutting off a thin layer of the peel and leaving the flesh as much as possible. Using this method, peel all eggplant from its peel.
That's all, this method is ideal for making stew or soup.
How to clean eggplants if they are lying on a shelf
To clean young eggplants is easy enough, but the situation is different with old fruits. They are worse cleaned. Firstly, the peel is much denser, and it is harder than that of young vegetables. Secondly, its taste is more pronounced, and in order to get rid of it, the skin must be removed with the upper layer of pulp.
To cope with this difficult task, it is enough to use a little trick: before cleaning, you need to soak the old eggplant in a slightly salted solution. It is prepared in accordance with the proportion: 1 tablespoon of salt per 1 tablespoon of water. If you don’t want to prepare the solution, you can just put the eggplants in a pan, bring to a boil and immediately transfer them to cold water. Then you can easily peel the peel or leave it. These 2 ways will help get rid of excessive bitterness in old eggplant.
How to clean eggplant to get an original dish
If you are tired of trivial dishes and want to try something new and interesting, then you can try different methods of cleaning and cutting eggplant. Any eggplant can be cut in at least four ways: discs, stripes, cubes and just halves. In some cases, for cutting, you will need an eggplant without a peel, while in another it will be possible not to clean it. In addition, eggplant can be used in three ways: completely cleaned, not cleaned and “striped”. The last option is suitable for those who like food to be not only tasty, but also beautiful, because the striped eggplant in the dish will look very original due to this color contrast.
A simple recipe for eggplant
Eggplant is an almost universal ingredient. It can be used both as an independent dish, and as an additive in others: stew, caviar, soup, etc. However, those who have never cooked anything from eggplant, it is recommended to try one of them.
We will need 3 eggplants, oil and spices to taste. Clean the eggplants and cut them with discs 5 mm thick. Anneal the pan, pour oil. Next, just lay the eggplant on it and fry on each side for 3-5 minutes. Then remove the remaining oil and sprinkle with spices on top. A dish of just 1 ingredient is ready!
