Tonight we decided to take on Eggplant Parmesan! Ben is a HUGE Eggplant Parmesan fan. I am pretty impartial to cooked Eggplant but decided it was worth a try, after all, this is all about mixing it up! Plus the Pinterest video made it look pretty doable.
Ingredients: The ingredients were pretty easy to locate. I decided against the tomato chunks and just bought a sauce to use instead. We were both surprised that the recipe only called for two eggplants, but let me tell you, I am SO RELIEVED that we only cut two eggplants. Once of these days I will actually learn to read through the entire recipe before committing to cooking the meal.
I cut up the eggplant into slices and layered it between paper towels with some salt to help dry them out. Then I read that this portion was going to take 45 minutes and my eyes almost popped out of my head!
I set the flour, egg, and breadcrumb mix up and started dipping the pieces. I will say, this took WAY longer than I expected and also used 5 eggs instead of 3 and three rounds of breadcrumbs/parmesan cheese/olive oil instead of the one round that she suggested. For reference, I estimated the olive oil on the second round and skipped it on the third round. To be fair though, my bread crumb and parmesan cheese were estimates to begin with, so it is very possible that I just underestimated, whoops!
The eggplant pieces needed to cook for 30 minutes (we had 3 trays) so this took longer than we expected. Once they came out we started laying them in the pan and layering on the sauce and mozzarella cheese. I was going to cook the onions and garlic to go with the sauce (I really did have the best intentions). However, after how long it actually took us to coat the eggplant and cook it, I was committed to just using the jar of sauce. We also happened to run out of sauce- luckily we had another jar on hand for tomorrow’s dinner!
We covered with foil and popped it in the oven and again were shocked to see that this was going to need to cook for 20 minutes with foil and then another 25 minutes without foil! I hopped in the shower and then pulled out the dinner (early) while Ben was on a work call – definitely could have let it cook all the way after all.
Overall Rating:
- It took TWO HOURS to prepare and cook which is not my kind of dinner on a weeknight. I am so glad that neither of us had to go into the city for work before this, not a chance this dinner would have been ready before 10 pm!
- Taste: Ben stopped telling me about work mid-sentence to tell me how amazing this one tasted. For how much effort it took, I have to agree, it was absolutely worth it. I won’t lie, I had written it off before we even started because it was eggplant and it took so long to prepare and cook. However, it is one of those dinners that feels dense even without meat.
- In the future, I would definitely skip the oil in the bread crumbs, or at least use less of it. I will also only be cooking this on a weekend when I have plenty of time!
- I will say for two of us, we have LOTS of leftovers, so next time we will be using only one eggplant in a smaller pan!
Let me know if you try it as the original recipe or with your own modifications!
Link to recipe: https://feelgoodfoodie.net/recipe/baked-eggplant-parmesan/
xoxo
Krysta
