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)