How to Dry Eggplant at Home

Eggplant is a unique vegetable that can be used to make delicious, interesting and unusual dishes. Housewives have long known about the various ways of canning it, but there is another simple and effective method of preserving, which will allow the winter use of eggplants for cooking favorite dishes and snacks. Drying allows you to prepare the vegetable in large quantities.

As a side note! Dishes with dried eggplants do not differ in taste almost from those prepared with fresh vegetables. In addition, drying allows you to save not only the natural flavor, but also a lot of useful elements that are lost in canning.

If the harvest is plentiful, this method allows you to save it and use it at any convenient time. Unfortunately, fresh eggplants are stored for a very short time, and processing such a volume for caviar or salads in jars requires a lot of time and effort. In addition, they require additional products for their preparation, which drying does not require.

This method of preparation has long been used in Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Italy and other Mediterranean countries. There are also many recipes where the ingredients are exactly dried eggplants. They have a distinctive flavor reminiscent of mushrooms and a spongy texture.

How to choose eggplants for drying

Eggplants are known to be bitter. If the bitterness is evident in the fresh product, it can be felt even more clearly in the dried one. Well-matured eggplants acquire a bitter taste. Therefore, you should choose young vegetables of "milky" ripeness of small size for drying. Also small eggplants have fewer seeds or they are not so distinctly felt when eating. This is also worth paying attention to.

There are special varieties of this vegetable, which, even when ripe, have no seeds and are not bitter. These include many hybrids. If you plan to dry them for the winter, it is worth initially selecting varieties whose fruits are suitable for drying and storage.

It is important to pay attention to the appearance of fruits in the selection for processing. They should be even and undamaged, without marks, stains, signs of rotting. The quality of raw material affects the taste of the product. Vegetables must be smooth, whole, with a glossy skin and a beautiful rich color.

How to prepare the vegetable for drying

Preparation of eggplants for drying depends on how later it is planned to use the product, what dishes will be prepared from it.

First of all, the collected fruits are washed, laid out on a napkin or towel to evaporate excess moisture from the surface. If you do not plan to harvest whole eggplants, they must be peeled. After drying, the skin will become even harder and tougher, but it is difficult to remove it from already sliced and dried pieces, and it will be uncomfortable to eat. In the case where one wants a whole dried product, the skin is left on. It will help to preserve the shape, if you want with a whole fruit, it is much easier to remove it.

The skin is cut as thin as possible to leave more delicious flesh and preserve as much nutrients as possible. It is better to use a special knife for peeling vegetables.

For the preparation of first courses, roasts, caviar, stew eggplants are cut into cubes of small or medium size. Here it is worth focusing on your taste and preferences. For salads and appetizers, the fruits can be cut into thin slices or grated. It is better to use the one used to grate carrots for Korean salad, but you can also use a simple coarse grater. If you plan to roast them or make rolls stuffed with delicious stuffing, you can cut them into thin rings or half rings if the eggplants are large, or cut along the vegetable into thin plates.

In some Mediterranean countries, eggplants are dried whole or cut into halves. This method allows the vegetables to be used for stuffing in the future. In this case, the skin is left. The fruit is cut lengthwise into two halves, remove the seeds with a spoon, leaving only the dense flesh. Before slicing, remove the stalk and the tip of the vegetable. To prevent eggplants from losing their shape and drying faster, toothpicks or short wooden skewers are placed inside as spacers.

Some hostesses prefer to pre-soak the vegetables in salted water and blanch a little before starting the drying process. The salt removes the bitter taste. After slicing the vegetable, it is sprinkled with salt, stirred and allowed to stand for a while or pour cold salted water. After that the slices must be rinsed in cold running water. Before drying let excess moisture evaporate or soak in a pre-bedded paper towel.

Sometimes after soaking in salt the eggplants blanch a little. To do this, the water is boiled, the slices are lowered for a few seconds, taken out and transferred to a bowl of cold water to stop the cooking process. This pretreatment reduces the time of cooking the product in the future. But this step is not necessary at all. You can safely do without it.

It is better to combine slicing methods, so that in the future there is a variety of shapes and sizes. Then it will be possible to prepare any dish, not thinking about the fact that the pieces are too small and not suitable for stuffed eggplants or rolls.

How to properly dry eggplants

There are different ways to dry vegetables. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. If the weather and space on the plot allows, vegetables can be dried in the air. When you need a quick result, it is worth using an oven or electric dryer.

In the oven

The method of drying eggplants in the oven takes the least time, but requires constant presence and participation. Periodically, you will need to check and turn the product to ensure that it is evenly cooked. There are two methods of drying these vegetables in the oven. The first one uses a lower temperature and takes longer to stay in the oven chamber, the second option allows a much shorter time due to the high temperature of heating, but additional drying outside the oven will be required. Also, using this method can burn a batch of product and everything will have to be thrown away.

Prepared slices, cubes, circles or strips should be placed on the baking tray. To prevent the juice from drying on the surface and then remove the finished product, you can pre-lay the bottom with baking paper or put a silicone mat. Spread the product at a distance from each other, allowing air to circulate and preventing the pieces from sticking to each other. You can cover a rack with paper and place it on a baking tray. This way the air blows better on the eggplants, and the vegetables will dry a little faster. In this case it is worth to make small holes in the paper with a knife.

If you set the temperature no higher than 60 degrees, the drying process will last about 5-6 hours. The door of the oven should be left ajar, so that the evaporating moisture can escape. From time to time it is necessary to take the trays out of the oven, to turn the slices, to stir. After a certain time the product should be taken out and allowed to cool at room temperature. If the eggplants have retained moisture, remaining soft, it is worth to put them back in the oven and dry them until ready at the same temperature.

You can significantly reduce the stay of the product in the oven, setting the temperature in this case from 100 to 160 degrees. But the second method will require attentiveness. It is necessary to constantly check the product so that it does not burn. At high temperature eggplants dry for 1 hour, then the temperature is reduced to 60-80 degrees and dried for another 2 hours. Such an extreme method can be used when there is very little time. It is still worth using the first option, when the vegetable is dried slowly and evenly.

Before laying out the cooked eggplants in containers for storage, be sure to wait for the product to cool completely at room temperature. At the same time, all slices will equalize in moisture and finish drying to the end.

In an electric dryer

Using an electric dryer is the best option to get quality results. In the process almost no useful properties of the product are lost, it is not required to be constantly near and control. Drying with this method takes about the same amount of time as the process using an oven. The design of the electric dryer allows warm air to circulate through all tiers, ensuring even drying. You will have to swap tiers 1-2 times if there are more than 4 tiers. In this case, the product on the top racks will dry more slowly, so it is necessary to lower them down and raise the lower racks up.

Vegetable for drying is prepared in the same way as for the other methods. Chopped slices should be placed on the grate, leaving free space between them. If the product is sliced straw, the whole process will take about 4 hours at a temperature of 50 degrees. To dry the plates and rings, you will need to raise the temperature to 60 degrees. The product will be ready in 5 hours. But the time depends on many factors: the moisture content of the pulp, the thickness of slices, the power of the device. Therefore, it is worth to approach the process individually and focus on the readiness of eggplants, rather than the recommended time.

In the microwave oven

Microwave oven, of course, can not solve the problem of preparing a large number of vegetables. The size of the chamber does not allow to carry out drying in large portions. It is convenient if there is a surplus that needs to be processed quickly to use later. The main advantage of microwave oven is the high speed of the process. But you will need to be around at all times to monitor the process.

If a microwave is used, you should try to get rid of the moisture beforehand. Otherwise, the eggplants will not dry out, but will boil. Therefore, it is better to pre-dry well first with a paper or cotton towel, you can squeeze a little.

It is better to use a grate for the microwave, so the product will dry much faster. If you don't have one, an ordinary microwave plate will do. The bottom of the plate or grid is better lined with baking paper. Spread the slices with small gaps. Set the power to 100-150 W and turn on the oven for 20 minutes. But it is necessary to control the process. The duration depends on the thickness of the slices, the moisture of the eggplants, so the time may require less.

When the time is over, the rack or plate should be taken out of the chamber, let the product cool down a little, and leave the door open so that the steam that has formed will come out. Put the eggplants in the microwave again and repeat the program 2-3 times until the product is ready. The duration should be controlled independently, focusing on the power of the device and the peculiarities of raw materials.

When everything is ready, take out the eggplants and let them cool completely in the room on a plate. To increase the volume or speed up the process, you can dry two batches at once. Put one batch of product on a rack, place the other on a plate and cook them one at a time. While one batch will cool in between programs, the second batch can dry in the oven.

In the sun.

This is the most natural way to dry vegetables, allowing you to dry a large volume of fruit at once or gradually in small batches, picking them as they ripen. It requires no special appliances or skills, but it takes the longest time and requires consistent dry and hot weather.

Drying directly under sunlight is not recommended. Exposure to ultraviolet rays destroys some of the vitamins and beneficial elements. Trays with vegetables should be outside in the shade - where they are well blown by the wind.

Usually eggplants, cut into cubes, slices, circles and slices, it is advised to dry on the trays exposed to the street. Vegetables to be dried whole or in halves should be threaded and hung in a well-ventilated place in the shade. Then this is how you can store them.

To protect the slices of fruit from dust and insects, the trays should be covered with gauze. After 2-3 hours, the slices should be turned and stirred. Overnight, the trays should be brought into a warm and dry room, so they do not get damp from high humidity and dew. In the morning, when it dries outdoors, they can be put back in their original place. The whole process will take about three to six days. The length depends on many factors, so you need to check for readiness and remove those pieces that have already dried out. Eggplant that is dried whole will be ready in about 2 weeks.

There are tricks that allow you to get unusual flavors and aromas while the eggplant is still drying.

1. To get a meaty flavor, the prepared sliced vegetables can be placed in a mixture of soy sauce, vegetable oil, hot peppers, and paprika for 2 hours. Then take them out, blot the excess moisture with a napkin, and put them to dry.
2. If you dry the eggplants sliced into rings in the oven for 15 minutes at 160 degrees, then finish drying in the air, the vegetables will acquire a mushroom flavor.
3. Spicy slices will turn out if you sprinkle them with spicy seasoning before drying.

How to readiness

It is very important to fully dry vegetables, otherwise they will begin to mold and spoil. But you should not over dry them, or they will lose their flavor and aroma. Fully dried piece is devoid of moisture, and when you press it, the juice should not come out of it. It either crumbles or breaks.

If the eggplants were dried whole, it's easy to check if they're ready, too. The fruit becomes light, almost weightless. If you shake the eggplant, the seeds inside should make a noise like a child's rattle. When the pulp dries out completely, the seeds fall out into the cavity that formed and make a similar ringing sound when the eggplant is shaken.

How to properly store dried eggplants

To preserve cooked eggplants until the next harvest season, it is necessary to follow simple storage rules. First of all, moisture should be prevented. Dried eggplants should be stored in a dry, dark place at a constant temperature. A pantry or the shelf of a kitchen cabinet will do.

As a container for storing eggplants, cut into pieces, you can use a glass jar. It should be well washed and dried, pour the product inside and do not close tightly with a lid. It is better to take thick paper, cover the jar and secure it with string. You can store eggplants in a paper bag made by yourself. Canvas bags are also suitable. They allow the product to breathe. It is worth remembering that dried vegetables should not be stored near products with a strong aroma, as they are good at absorbing foreign odors.

If the eggplants were dried on a thread, then they can be stored in the same bundles and chains. It is better to find a place in the pantry, where you can hang them without taking them off the string. You can also put them in a paper bag or glass jar.

Some housewives prefer to prepare dried eggplants in circles for frying in advance. To do this, in a dry sterile jar you need to pour a little sunflower oil, preferably fragrant. Put a slice of eggplant on top, add slices of thinly sliced garlic if you wish, pour more oil and put the vegetable slice on top again. Repeat until there is no more room in the jar, pour the oil to the edge and close with a lid. This kind of preparation is best stored in the refrigerator. If necessary, the vegetables will already be restored, soaked in oil and flavored. It will be enough to take them out of the jar and fry them on a heated frying pan.

What are the benefits of dried eggplants

Dried product retains up to 80% of the useful properties of fresh eggplant. In the process of drying almost all the vitamins and trace elements remain, so eating them has a beneficial effect on human health.

Dried eggplant contains vitamins A, C, PP and group B. They take part in metabolic processes, help get rid of toxins, improve overall health. They also contain natural sugar, pectins, acids, potassium, iron, phosphorus, magnesium, copper, calcium.

Powder made from dried fruits or skins helps fight hypertension, liver and kidney abnormalities. It is enough to eat 1 tsp. before meals. The powder to soon feel the beneficial effects of the effect. The fiber contained in the product helps to normalize the gastrointestinal tract, heart and blood vessels, and kidneys. Substances contained in the vegetable help to clear the blood vessels of cholesterol plaques, relieve edema. A solution based on salt, water and dried eggplant powder is also used to strengthen the gums. It is recommended to people suffering from gout.

Also eating dried eggplants helps to reduce nicotine addiction in people who want to quit smoking. This is due to the content of nicotinic acid in the vegetable. Therefore, eggplants are similar in their effect on the smoker's body to that of a nicotine patch.

But, like everywhere else, there are limitations in the use of eggplant. The fruits should not be ripe when they are harvested for drying. Ripe vegetables contain solanine, which can cause intoxication if eaten frequently. And just an overabundance of substances can cause a systemic failure in the body or exacerbation of diseases.

What can be cooked of dried eggplants

Cooking with dried eggplants is different in that they need to be prepared in advance. Before adding dried vegetables to any dish, you should pour warm water over them for 30-40 minutes. They will soak in moisture and restore their shape. Now they can be cooked as well as fresh.

You can also use the product in dry form. To do this, the eggplants need to be ground into a powder. It is possible to use it as a seasoning or thickener. It does not need to be cooked beforehand. It can be included in the dish at the stage of adding potatoes or cereals. But it is worth adjusting the amount of liquid, because dried eggplants absorb it strongly.

Dried eggplant appetizer

If guests show up on the doorstep unexpectedly, you can please them with a delicious appetizer, which is prepared in 20 minutes.

Ingredients:

• 2 large handfuls of dried eggplants;
• 2 medium onions;
• 1 sweet bell bell pepper;
• 2-3 cloves of garlic;
• A handful of chopped walnuts;
• bunch of fresh coriander;
• 1 tbsp. mayonnaise;
• 2 tbsp. sour cream or white yogurt;
• salt and spices to taste;
• Sunflower oil for frying.

Preparation:

1. Reconstitute dried eggplants. In a saucepan pour eggplants, pour water and put on the fire. Boil for a few minutes. When recovered, drain the water and cut into coarse julienne.
2. Onion cut into large half rings. Cut the peppers into julienne strips. Chop half of the garlic. Grate the other half and set aside.
3. Heat a frying pan. Pour in the sunflower oil. Fry chopped onion until soft, add pepper and minced garlic. Stir everything and fry.
4. Add the eggplant slices to the vegetable mixture. Cook the whole thing on medium heat.
5. When the vegetables are almost ready, add chopped nuts. Stir and cook until soft. Add coriander, salt and spices. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.
6. While the dish cools, in a separate bowl mix sour cream and mayonnaise. Add the sauce to the cooled vegetables. Add grated raw garlic. Stir it.

Serve the appetizer chilled.

Fried dried eggplants

In the middle of winter, you can please your loved ones with a simple but very tasty dish that will remind you of summer.

Ingredients:

• 100 g of dried eggplants;
• 1-2 bulbs;
• 1 bell bell pepper;
• 1 large tomato;
• 2-3 cloves of garlic;
• 1 tbsp. soy sauce;
• Greens of parsley, coriander, dill;
• salt and pepper to taste;
• vegetable oil for frying.

Preparation:

1. Pour the eggplants in salted water and let stand 1-2 hours to recover. Then squeeze, rinse with running water. If necessary, cut into slices.
2. Cut onion in half rings, peppers in julienne.
3. In a heated frying pan in oil fry the onion and peppers for 1-2 minutes. Add eggplant. Cover and stew over medium heat for 15 minutes. Stir occasionally.
4. Peel the tomato. The skin can easily be removed if you make a small incision and put boiling water on the tomato. Shred and add to the vegetables. Braise for about 5 minutes more.
5. Remove from heat. Then add chopped garlic, soy sauce, pepper and fresh herbs. Salt more, if necessary.

The dish can be served hot and cold.

Dried Eggplant Salad

Ingredients:

• 100-150 g of dried eggplants;
• 1-2 hot peppers;
• 3-4 cloves of garlic;
• 1 tsp. ground coriander;
• 3 tbsp. soy sauce;
• 1 tbsp. table vinegar;
• 5-6 tbsp. sesame oil (sunflower oil can be used);
• pinch of sugar.

Preparation:

1. Cut the eggplants rather coarsely, in strips or shapeless pieces.
2. To recover dried vegetables, pour them into a saucepan and pour water, let simmer for 7-10 minutes. Remove from the stove, drain the hot water, pour cold water to cool quickly, squeeze a little.
3. Put the eggplants on a well heated frying pan with oil. Fry on a high heat 4-5 minutes.
4. Add vinegar, reduce heat and cook a couple more minutes.
5. Finely chop hot pepper and garlic and place in the eggplant. At this point, add spices and soy sauce. Cook on stove for a minute more. Remove and cool.

Stuffed Dried Eggplants

In Turkey and Italy, dried eggplants are stuffed with minced meat and served with a delicious sauce. This dish requires fruit dried in halves or long strips so that the stuffing can be wrapped in them.

Ingredients:

• Strips or halves of dried eggplant;
• 300-350 grams of ground beef and lamb;
• 1 small onion;
• 2-3 cloves of garlic;
• 0.5 tbsp. rice;
• 2 tbsp. tomato paste;
• 1 small tomato;
• Sprigs of fresh mint and coriander;
• 0.5 tsp. zira seeds;
• black pepper and hot pepper to taste;
• salt;
• Butter for stuffing;
• 2 Tbsp. tomato paste;
• 1 small tomato;
• 1 tbsp. hot pepper paste;
• 1 tbsp. water (the last 4 ingredients are for the sauce).

Preparation:

1. Pour warm water over the eggplants and let stand 1-2 hours to reconstitute.
2. Proceed to prepare the filling. Chop the onion finely and fry in butter until soft. Coarsely chop garlic and fry together with onion. Pour in the rice, reduce the heat to low and fry, stirring.
3. Peel and peel tomatoes, finely chop one of them. Mix with tomato paste. Add this sauce to the fried rice and stew for 5 minutes.
4. Turn off the heat, remove from the stove, and allow to cool. Combine the rice with the minced meat, add the chopped herbs, salt and spices. Knead well.
5. Drain the eggplants, lightly squeeze the strips and soak away any excess moisture. Stuff by twisting into rolls.
6. Take a saucepan, pot, a pan with low walls. Densely lay the rolls on the bottom in a single layer.
7. Prepare sauce. Mix all the ingredients together.
8. Pour the prepared mixture over the stuffed eggplants. It should completely cover them. If the liquid does not conceal the rolls, add water, and press the pieces with a plate.
9. Put a saucepan on the fire. Bring eggplant in sauce to a boil. Cover with a lid. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 1 hour. Then turn off the heat and leave to simmer for another 15 minutes.

Serve with white yoghurt mixed with finely chopped mint and cilantro.

Dried eggplant makes almost the same dishes that are made with fresh vegetables.