Forest Girl Farm

If you’re still salting eggplant and letting it weep in a colander for an hour, you’re following advice written for eggplant your grandmother bought in 1970. Almost every variety grown today has had the bitterness bred right out of it, and a fresh eggplant off your own plant is the least bitter one you’ll ever cook.

Does Salting Eggplant Actually Do Anything?

Salting was invented to pull bitter compounds out of older, seedier varieties. Modern ones — ‘Ichiban’, ‘Rosa Bianca’, ‘Black Beauty’, the slim Japanese types that do so well in our long warm falls — just aren’t bitter enough to need it.

Salting does one thing worth knowing about: it collapses the air pockets in the flesh, so the eggplant soaks up less oil when it hits the pan. If you’re deep-frying, salt away. For roasting or grilling, skip it. What actually matters is picking it young — a fruit with glossy skin and small, pale seeds is sweet no matter what you do to it. Once the skin goes dull and the seeds turn brown, that’s when bitterness shows up, and salt won’t rescue it.

The 30-Minute Marinated Eggplant We Make All August

This is the one that converts people who swear they hate eggplant. It’s better on day two, which makes it my favorite thing to make when the plants are producing faster than we can eat.

• Slice 2 medium eggplants into rounds a scant half-inch thick. Thinner and they go limp; thicker and the centers stay spongy.
• Brush both sides lightly with olive oil. Don’t drown them — eggplant will absorb every drop you offer.
• Roast at 425°F for 20–25 minutes, flipping once, until the edges are deep brown and the centers give easily under a fork. Pale eggplant is bitter eggplant; let it get real color.
• While it roasts, whisk 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar, 2 smashed garlic cloves, a good pinch of salt, and a big handful of chopped basil, parsley, or oregano.
• Layer the hot rounds in a shallow dish, spooning the dressing over each layer. Hot eggplant drinks it in; cold eggplant just sits in it.
• Let it rest at least 30 minutes at room temperature. Keeps a week in the fridge.

What Do You Do With a Dish of It?

• Piled on grilled bread with a little soft cheese
• Chopped and folded through warm pasta with some of the marinade as the sauce
• Tucked into a sandwich with tomatoes — the vinegar cuts right through
• Straight from the fridge, standing up, which is honestly how most of it disappears here

Skip the colander, get the oven hot, and pick your eggplant while the skin still shines. That’s the whole trick.

Is your eggplant finally coming in, or still thinking about it?