Quick Tip: How to Roast Eggplant on the Stove Top

We’re deep into a baba ganoush love affair at the moment, helped by the fact that eggplants are finally starting to appear at the farmers market. We like ours with a bit of smokiness to it, but without a grill, we’ve had to improvise. Here’s how we’ve been doing it on the stove top.

You first prick each eggplant with a knife or a fork and then lay it directly over the flames on your gas stove top. The eggplant can release a lot of liquid, so we like to lay a few strips of tin foil around the burner for easy clean up. Use tongs to rotate it every so often and make sure all the skin gets evenly charred. It’s just like roasting red peppers, really!

Once the skin is charred, you can go about with the rest of your recipe. For baba ganoush, this usually involves cutting the eggplant in half and continuing to roast it in the oven until the flesh is completely soft. If you’re using the eggplant in something like a curry or stew, you can peel off the skin and cut it up as normal.

This is actually a tip we picked up a while back from David Lebovitz’s blog. He also likes his baba ganoush extra-smoky but lacks a grill in his tiny Parisian apartment. Here’s the link to his recipe and technique:

• Baba Ganoush from David Lebovitz

What’s your favorite method for roasting eggplant?

(Image: Flickr member _e.t licensed under Creative Commons)

Comments (8)

I'm not fortunate enough to have a gas stove, so I put mine under the broiler of my electric stove's oven. Works pretty well but must be diligently watched to prevent burning. (not to mention setting off my smoke alarm! ;)

I remember the first time I had eggplant roasted this way, I was living with my uncle who makes the most amazing and effortless italian food at home everynight. I hated the smell of the burning eggplant skin!

But after eating it once a week or so, every summer of my adolesence, the smell (and taste) has become a nostalgic favorite! My Dad will use the roasted eggplant to make baba ganoush, but my uncle just tossed it with fresh garlic, lemon, olive oil and salt. We ate it with small bagette slices before dinner. (He calls it "eggplant caviar" but I'm sure there's a better name :P )

My Romanian co-worker from TJ's told me about this amazing Romanian dish that you just plunk the whole eggplant in the oven and scoop out the goo later. I forget what you put in it afterwards but it sounded so good!

We use a Weber grill basket on our stove's gas burner for eggplant and also to roast peppers. They are always done to perfection. It's a big improvement over just laying them on the flame.

One of the many reasons why I like gas stoves. This is exactly how I make an Indian eggplant dish (called baingan bharta) at home. After I char the eggplant on top of the stove, I let it cool to touch, and then peel off the skin and remove the flesh. Then, in a pot, I toast whole coriander seeds, cumin seeds, a little turmeric, and chili powder in a bit of oil. Then, add in a chopped onion, cook until lightly translucent. Add 3-4 tomatoes, stir and cook for a few minutes (don't let tomatoes breakdown too much, just until the raw flavor dissipates). Then, I add the eggplant flesh, salt to taste, and stir for a few minutes to heat through and combine the flavors. If it's too thick, I'll add a 1/4 c of water. Perfect with naan or rice. One of my favorite summer go to's if I can bear to turn on the stove!

I'm from Romania and a variant of baba ganoush is quite popular here (we call it eggplant salad). We eat it round the year, so we often roast the eggplants, clean them and then make packets for freezing (up to 15 kilos of eggplants/year :) )

As for the roasting, we have some special metal disks, thinner than regular pan metal that we use for this and can be bought in all the markets. Some of them have holes so the liquid can drain, and others have some grooves on the bottom for it to accumulate.

Not sure if I remember this correctly, but I think that one time my mother roasted the eggplants in a small baking pan, put on the stove top, instead of the metal disk.

Ah yeah, Prema's comment brings a smile to my face. That is one of my favorite recipes! So good! Do you add yogurt to yours?

Orchidophile, glad to see someone else who enjoys making baingan bharta. I agree, it's so good (and so easy)! I don't add yogurt to mine, but I often serve it with raita.