Whole Roasted Miso Aubergine | Vegetables Recipes | Jamie Oliver (2024)

FAQs

How to roast aubergine Jamie Oliver? ›

Place the aubergines in a large roasting tray, dot the cherry tomatoes around, and pop into the oven for 40 minutes, turning a couple of times.

In the past, recipes called for aubergines to be sliced and salted before cooking to reduce their bitterness. As modern varieties are much less bitter, that is no longer necessary, unless you're planning to fry them – aubergines soak up oil like a sponge and salting helps reduce that.

Skinnier varieties can be halved, and the cut flesh scored and brushed with oil, before they are baked, grilled or barbecued. Small round aubergines used in Thai dishes are quartered and eaten raw with spicy dips, and pea aubergines are added to curries whole.

Most aubergines you get in the UK are less sturdy, so salting just bashes up the flesh. My teacher, the Italian cook and one-time London restaurateur Carla Tomasi, is adamant you don't need to salt any more.

If you are worried that the eggplant might be bitter, slice or cube it, then salt it liberally and allow it to drain for an hour or so before cooking. Putting salt on the eggplant triggers osmosis, which draws out excess moisture and the bitterness along with it.

Eggplant (US, CA, AU, NZ, PH), aubergine (UK, IE), brinjal (IN, SG, MY, ZA), or baigan (GY) is a plant species in the nightshade family Solanaceae.

You might know them as eggplants or you might know them as aubergines, but they are exactly the same plant. The English prefer the latter name, while in North America we use the former.

An aubergine is a plant that grows large, dark purple fruits. If you live in North America, you probably call aubergines "eggplants."

You would have to eat more than a dozen whole eggplants (at least!) in one sitting before reaching potentially toxic levels of solanine. (Read about solanine in sprouted potatoes for more information on the topic.) In fact, the compound can also be present in cooked eggplant.

Luckily, the answer is yes! While the leaves and flowers can be toxic, the eggplant itself is safe to consume both raw and cooked, and the compound that some might be sensitive to, solanine, is only toxic when consumed in large quantities.

Can you eat the whole aubergine? ›

If the skin is in good shape, it is edible, though some varieties have skin that is too tough to eat. Peel the skin with a vegetable peeler if you think it's wise – younger aubergine skin is fine to eat, but older, more ripened aubergine skin has a bitter taste. Cut off the stem and base, too.

Eggplant is about 80 to 90 percent water, so when you put them in the oven they need space to evaporate all that water and caramelize properly," says Covarrubias. Give them a toss halfway through the cooking process to make sure they're cooked evenly, too.

I tend to soak the slices in a bowl of water with a couple of tablespoon of salt for about 30-45 minutes. It doesn't have to do with bitterness, but I find that in doing this, the fried eggplant turns out less greasy," Jenkins says.