Is it necessary to soak eggplants before cooking? How many hours to soak eggplants? How to Avoid Bitter Eggplant Dishes
Eggplant is a wonderful vegetable that is very popular in many cuisines around the world. And this is not surprising, because in addition to the original spicy taste, it has a huge amount of useful substances.
Eggplant contains fiber, soluble sugars, pectin, proteins, potassium, calcium, phosphorus, iron, magnesium, sodium, vitamins C, B1, B2, B5, PP. Besides,100 grams of this wonderful vegetable contains only 28 calories, which is why everyone who watches their figure loves it very much.
There are a huge number of recipes for eggplant dishes, and almost every one of them begins with the advice to generously salt it before cooking. Is this really necessary or can this advice be ignored in some cases? Let's figure it out together.
Why salt eggplants?
There are 2 main reasons why recipes recommend salting, drying, and then rinsing eggplant slices before cooking.
Reason one - g speak. Thanks to salt, the eggplant releases juice, which removes the bitterness from it. Many people say so. However, culinary guru Harold McGee assures that adding salt only changes our perception, but not the taste of eggplant itself. There is an opinion that salt does not remove bitterness at all.
Listen to your taste sensations. If you are hypersensitive to the taste of eggplant and you can clearly feel its bitterness, then to be on the safe side, you can salt it. To remove bitterness, it is usually recommended to salt the eggplant pieces and leave them for 30 minutes, maybe even 60 - then the eggplant will fry better.
But if you can do without pre-salting, keep at it, otherwise you will one day find yourself frying an exhausted, shriveled eggplant, waiting for that perfect silky texture.
Reason two- oil absorption. Salt draws water out of the cells, they shrink and the sponge-like structure of the eggplant is disrupted. It is sometimes said that salt “thickens” the flesh, so it will absorb less oil when frying.
But according to another opinion, shrunken cells, on the contrary, absorb much more oil when frying, and this allows you to get a more delicate, silky texture as opposed to a meaty and elastic one.
Celebrity chef Kenji Lopez-Alt focuses not on the oil, but on the air: “The main condition for obtaining the optimal texture of the eggplant is the destruction of its cellular structure and the removal of air from it. To do this, before frying, you need to place a “sandwich” of eggplant slices between paper towels and plates in the microwave."
Does size matter?
Certainly. And not only the size, but also the age and structure of the pulp. “Plucked before they are fully ripe, cooked over several days, eggplant is sweet on its own and needs no salt,” writes vegetarian cookbook author Deborah Madison.
Minimalist chef Mark Bittman assures his readers: "If the eggplant is fresh and strong, chances are good it will be good without added salt, no matter the variety." Some chefs go even further and claim that eggplant should be “hard as a rock.”
If you have nowhere to get fresh eggplant, or the age of the vegetable remains a mystery to you, look for small Asian varieties (but not the seedy green southeastern varieties, which are valued precisely for their bitterness, otherwise the effect will be the opposite).
For vegetables that have been stored for a long time and are already “aged,” salt will help reduce the bitterness that increases with the age of the fruit. If the eggplant is large, soft or very seedy, it is worth the time and effort to pre-salt it.
Salt and different ways to cook eggplants
If you bake, cook young, strong fruits on coals, grill or in the microwave, you can give up on salt.
If you are going to fry young eggplants in a frying pan, deep-fry them, or want to stew them with a lot of oil, then it is better to spend time on salt.
Are there any exceptions? If you fry eggplant and like the elasticity and shape of its slices, you can make caponata or ratatouille and skip the pre-salting step.
Everything was finally confused by a big fan of eggplants - the London chef Ottolenghi, who sometimes salts eggplants and sometimes not. In one recipe, cubes of eggplant are immediately deep-fried and then added to udon noodles, while in another, large chunks of eggplant are pre-salted, then fried in a 1-centimeter layer of oil.
This variety of methods is due to the desire for different textures of eggplant and the unique features of deep frying compared to regular frying in a pan. Yes, the issue of salt is very complicated.
We love summer not only because the holiday season is coming, but also because this time of year gives us the opportunity to thoroughly enjoy fruits, berries and vegetables. It is in the summer that you can treat yourself to various snacks and salads, for example. Unfortunately, the taste of the dish is sometimes spoiled by the inherent bitterness of this vegetable. Now we will tell you about the benefits of the vegetable and how to remove bitterness from eggplants.
The benefits and harms of eggplants
For what reason do we love “little blue” ones so much? The answer is very simple: in addition to excellent taste, this vegetable has a large amount of nutrients and beneficial substances. Eggplants are good at reducing cholesterol levels in the blood and preventing it from depositing on the walls of blood vessels. For liver diseases and atherosclerosis, it is also recommended to eat “blue” dishes. They contain quite a lot of potassium (per 100 g - 226 mg), which regulates blood pressure, improves the functioning of the heart muscle, and helps normalize water and salt metabolism. Phosphorus, manganese, folic acid, vitamins C and B - eggplant is rich in these elements.
Which is contained in this vegetable, is perhaps the most powerful antioxidant with antiviral and bactericidal properties. Low content effectively and safely allows you to reduce weight, and high fiber content and a minimum of carbohydrates improve blood sugar levels. The phytonutrient nasunin normalizes the amount of iron, reducing the likelihood of cancer and heart disease. There is only one warning: due to the content of esters and salts, eggplant is not recommended for people with urolithiasis and gallstone diseases. Agree, it’s worth learning how to remove the bitterness from eggplants and start eating them regularly. And you can’t count how many delicious dishes you can prepare from them!
First method: salt treatment
Each housewife uses her own method, repeatedly tested and loved. In this article we will talk about the most famous methods of how to get rid of bitterness from eggplants. So, the first method is salt treatment. We take the vegetables prepared for processing, wash them well, and cut off the tails. Depending on the type of dish, cut the vegetable into slices or circles.
Place in a bowl (preferably deep), rub with coarse salt and leave them alone for 20 minutes. If you need whole “little blue ones,” then the marinating time can reach an hour. As the salt dissolves, droplets of liquid will begin to appear on the eggplants. After the specified time, all that remains is to rinse our vegetables well under cold running water and use them for their intended purpose. The first option on how to remove bitterness from eggplants has been mastered. It's the simplest. By the way, you can not rinse the vegetables with water, but simply squeeze them out.
Second method: soaking
In this case, the vegetables are simply soaked in water. To do this, carefully wash and cut the fruits in the required way, you need to put them in a bowl, pour water and add salt at the rate of 1 tablespoon of salt per 1 liter of water. Cover with a lid and place a weight on top, which can be a jar filled with water. There is nothing difficult about bitterness. Soaking lasts about 30 minutes for thin slices and about an hour for thick ones. Next, rinse the vegetable well under cold water and continue cooking according to the recipe. For information: vegetables soaked in this way will turn out even tastier and more tender, since they will absorb noticeably less oil.
Third method: peeling
It must be admitted that eggplants are not always bitter. But, unfortunately, it is impossible to predict this, so if it seems to you that the vegetables you purchased do not have the desired sweetness, then simply peel them. In this case, you can be absolutely sure that the bitterness will go away and will not spoil your dish.
There are a couple more ways to get rid of bitterness from eggplants. They are less popular, but some housewives continue to use them.
- First option: add chopped eggplants, place a napkin or paper towel on top and sprinkle with milk. Press down with some weight and after 10 minutes remove the towel or napkin. The bitter juice goes away along with them. Wipe the eggplant dry and prepare it according to the recipe.
- Second option: having cut the vegetables into the desired shape, soak them in boiling water without salt for 5-7 minutes. We drain the water, dry the “little blue” ones in a colander and start cooking.
We hope that the question of how to get rid of the bitterness of eggplants is closed. There is plenty of choice.
Choosing the right eggplants
Every housewife, going to the store for vegetables, should know how to buy the right “blue” ones that will not spoil a delicious appetizer or aromatic stew with excessive bitterness. Only old vegetables have this disadvantage; young ones can be cooked without pre-processing. In this case, you will not be faced with the task “How to remove bitterness from eggplants.” How to distinguish young from old? Nothing complicated: young and healthy vegetables have smooth, shiny skin without signs of rot or dark spots, small in size and oblong in shape. At the same time, they are relatively heavy, and if you cut such a fruit, you will not see the dark seeds inside. Feel the vegetable with your hands, and if it has a dense and hard texture, do not hesitate - buy it. If you haven’t found any suitable vegetables, remember the tips on how to remove bitterness from eggplants. Your dish will definitely be delicious!
Eggplant is a common vegetable, but not everyone's favorite. This is probably due to its taste characteristics. Dishes made from bluefish can be called somewhat savory. And all because of the tart and somewhat bitter taste. Therefore, it is believed that eggplants need to be soaked before cooking. But is it really necessary to do this? It turns out that the reason lies in the “age” of the fruit and the variety. Let's take a closer look at why and how to soak eggplants. Perhaps this article will help you take a different look at generally accepted culinary habits or change them somewhat.
Reasons for the unusual taste. Why and how to soak eggplants?
Do you know that it turns out that not all fruits taste so piquant? Even before cooking begins, you can determine whether they will be bitter.
Firstly, it depends on the degree of ripeness of the eggplants. Young blues usually do not have tart “shades”. And if you grow them at home, then this is a guarantee of getting a vegetable that tastes great. After all, on your own plot, all garden work (fertilizing, weeding, harvesting) is carried out as expected. It is especially important to water the blue ones on time. By absorbing water, they become saturated with moisture and become very pleasant to the taste in cooked dishes. In mass cultivation, this rule is not always observed. In addition, the harvest is not carried out very regularly, so large fruits with hard brown veins and dense pulp come across.
Secondly, when breeding new varieties, breeders try to eliminate plant deficiencies. Therefore, made from high-quality raw materials and being modern hybrids, as a rule, they do not taste bitter.
From everything we can conclude that young fruits with delicate spongy pulp, grown at home from seeds of new varieties, will never be bitter. If you still want to play it safe before preparing the dish, then use one of the processing methods: dry sprinkling with salt or immersing in the solution for a while. The choice depends on the fruit processing technology.
How to soak eggplantsin saline solution?
Cut the blue ones in the form of transverse circles or longitudinal slices. Then dissolve 1 heaped tablespoon of salt in 1 liter of cold raw water. Pour the mixture into the solution and leave for a while. How long to soak eggplants? This will take 20-30 minutes. Since they have a spongy structure, they can float. Many housewives cover the dishes with a wide plate and place a weight on top, immersing the pieces completely in the solution. Before cooking, rinse the pieces under running water and allow to drain.
How to soak eggplantsdry method?
Sprinkle the mugs with salt, using about 2 tbsp. l. for 2-3 medium eggplants. After a while they will release juice, with which all the bitterness will come out. With this processing option, you can also remove the peel using a sharp knife. After 35-40 minutes, rinse the eggplants with water and start cooking. Marinated blue ones, pre-soaked using the dry method, are especially good.
Eggplant is a wonderful vegetable from the nightshade family. It pleases us with color, pleasant roundness of shapes, and taste. There are hundreds of recipes for eggplant dishes, but in almost every one we read: before cooking eggplants, you need to remove the bitterness from them. This advice will seem strange to those who are used to cooking fresh eggplants, just picked from the garden. There is no trace of bitterness in fresh eggplants.
But old eggplants that have been lying on the shelves for more than one day can indeed taste bitter. Some people perceive this bitterness as a piquant characteristic of eggplants, but these are in the minority. The majority of cooks and cooks struggle with the bitterness of eggplants, and successfully, using several methods, the effectiveness of which has been tested over the years.
Salt to the rescue
The first way to remove bitterness from eggplant is to use salt. This method has several options - “dry” and “wet”.
The “dry” method is very simple. The eggplants are cut and sprinkled with coarse salt at the cut points. After 20 minutes, droplets of liquid will appear on the surface. Now the eggplants can be rinsed with water or simply wiped with a dry towel. With this method, coarse salt is preferable to fine salt, because the structure of the eggplant pulp is very porous. Remember how much oil a slice of eggplant absorbs when fried. Therefore, if you take finely ground salt, you may end up with over-salted eggplants rather than bitter ones.
The “wet” method is also not particularly complicated. Eggplants are cut and placed in a pan of cold salted water. Since eggplants do not sink in water, you will have to drown them using pressure. Half an hour of this “bath” and all the bitterness from the eggplant goes away. All that remains is to rinse them, squeeze out excess water and proceed directly to cooking. You can soak whole eggplants in salt water, but then the exposure time increases to a couple of hours. As for the amount of salt, a tablespoon per liter of water is enough.
Alternative ways to remove bitterness
The most basic way is to simply peel them by removing the skin from the eggplants. But such “naked” eggplants are not suitable for every recipe. In this case, there is another alternative way to remove the bitterness from the “little blue ones”. You need to cut the eggplant into slices, place the slices on a plate and place in the freezer for 4 hours. When you take the eggplant slices out of the freezer, simply squeeze out the liquid - the bitterness will go away. But keep in mind that such eggplants quickly lose their shape when cooked and turn into puree.
Those who don’t want to wait four hours can try the third method - remove the seeds from the eggplant. If you look closely, you will see that eggplant seeds are very similar in appearance to pepper seeds. They, of course, are not so spicy, but it is interesting that the eggplant, freed from seeds, will no longer need any manipulations with salt and the freezer. You just need to cut the eggplant lengthwise and scrape out as many seeds as you can with a spoon.
The fourth method is to soak eggplant pieces in milk. You need to immerse the eggplants in milk for at least half an hour, and press on top with a press. After half an hour, remove the eggplants and squeeze them thoroughly with a paper towel.
People who often eat eggplant often mention that these products can be bitter. Various pre-treatment methods are used to eliminate bitterness, otherwise it will transfer to the entire dish, permeating other ingredients.
Some people, of course, like a little bitterness that adds a piquant flavor, but for others, eggplants need to be processed before cooking so that the bitterness goes away. It’s worth finding out what to do to make the product edible, why this happens and what it means.
Why does bitterness appear?
Before you learn how to properly remove bitterness from a product, you need to understand why bitterness occurs. The fact is that many housewives do not have this problem, and they do not understand why soak the “little blue ones!” from bitterness. This is explained simply. Not all products are bitter, but only some of them. If you manage to successfully select a vegetable, then you won’t have to soak it or process it in any other way.
In other cases, processing is required, since the bitterness of this product will permeate the entire dish, and not everyone likes bitterness. In addition, this taste feature is caused by the presence of a large amount of solanine in the product. It is solanine, which is a poisonous and toxic substance, that can ruin the taste of a dish.
But the most important thing is that this substance in large quantities can cause poisoning, especially in people with poor health. By pre-treating the product, it is possible to dissolve solanine and thereby neutralize the bitterness.
In other words, after processing not only the taste improves, but also the benefits of the dish increase. Therefore, to the question of whether it is necessary to soak the “little blue ones” before using them for food, the answer is clear – it is necessary. It is especially important to do this before frying.
The fact is that fried eggplants almost lose their beneficial properties and become saturated with cholesterol and carcinogens. It is generally not advisable to fry them.
But if a person prefers this method of preparing them, then solanine should be eliminated. In combination with cholesterol and carcinogens, this substance becomes very harmful, so you should definitely minimize the risks.
As for the question of whether it is necessary to process eggplants before cooking, the answer is ambiguous. Processing is only necessary for those vegetables that are bitter, and this is not true for everyone. Some varieties can be eaten straight away or cooked straight away. Before soaking eggplants in salt water (one of the processing methods), it is worth finding out whether this is necessary in this particular case. It is not necessary to do this in the following situations:
In addition, you need to evaluate the freshness of the product. If they are stale, it is generally undesirable to eat them, and even more so they will need to be soaked. Freshness is indicated by such features as:
- elastic green tail;
- absence of rot on the stalk;
- green leaves;
- smooth skin surface (but not slippery).
Based on these characteristics, you will be able to choose a product that does not need to be processed before cooking. However, even if you follow all the recommendations, you can buy a vegetable that will be a little bitter. But this is not scary, the bitter taste will go away if you use certain processing methods.
Processing rules
So, how to soak eggplants? The best thing to do to prevent them from becoming bitter is to soak them in salt water. Vegetables that are too watery are not suitable for all recipes, so after this processing method you will have to remove excess moisture. If you don’t want to waste time on this, then you can not use water, but simply salt the eggplants - the result is almost the same.
Before doing this, you should figure out how long to soak the “little blue ones”. Some people think that if the product is left in solution for too long, it will be too salty. This is wrong. It is permissible to place it in salt water even for the whole night - this does not affect the taste.
Although it should be understood that the younger the vegetable, the less time it takes to eliminate the bitter taste. The easiest way is to try a piece of raw eggplant after some time. This will allow you to understand whether it is bitter, and also assess how much it has been saturated with salt.
Experienced housewives most often use salt so that the “blue” does not taste bitter, but you should know what and how to do to get results. There are only two main methods of processing, thanks to which the unpleasant aftertaste goes away.
In addition, additional methods can be used to remove bitterness from these products:
- Soaking in milk.
- Peeling vegetables from seeds.
- Freezing. However, after it the eggplants do not retain their shape, and after heat treatment they take on the appearance of a puree.
Eggplant is a very healthy vegetable for the body, but not everyone can eat it because of its inherent bitterness. This problem can be easily dealt with using fairly simple processing methods, after which the vegetable not only retains its properties, but also becomes more tasty and healthy.