Roasted eggplant is an easy and fall-apart tender side dish that everyone loves and an essential cooking skill you’ll want to master. I show you how to serve it with chimichurri sauce for the tastiest eggplant recipe.
For more eggplant recipes, try out eggplant pasta, baba ganoush, eggplant pizza, and parmigiana.
An Eggplant Recipe that Wows
Louise and I love how simple and satisfying roasted eggplant can be.
In just 30 minutes and with everyday ingredients, you can turn this humble Mediterranean vegetable into a deeply flavorful side dish or the base for countless meatless meals.
Think about creamy mutabal, Sicilian Caponata, Parmigiana, and zaalouk. All of these Mediterranean Diet recipes begin with a correctly-roasted eggplant.
The trick? By roasting eggplant at a high temperature, the flesh becomes tender, and slightly caramelized, enhancing its natural richness. That’s what you want 😋!
We like to finish it with a quick homemade chimichurri sauce for a melt-in-your-mouth eggplant infused with tangy, garlicky notes.
Serve it on top of pasta salads, fold it into couscous or chickpeas, or make it the star of your plate next to a main. It’s versatile, comforting, and endlessly delicious.
Whether you’re following the Mediterranean diet or just looking to cook more plant-forward meals, roasted eggplant is a delicious place to start.
Ingredients
- Eggplant: Globe eggplants or Italian eggplants (dark purple, almost black, round, and thick). Substitute graffiti, Japanese, Chinese, fairy tale, and white eggplant.
- Olive oil: extra virgin olive oil for roasting as it has a richer and fruitier flavor than regular olive oil. It’s also richer in polyphenols, making it stable at high roasting temperatures and healthier than most other oils.
Dressing
- Red wine vinegar: substitute white wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, or balsamic vinegar.
- Parsley: we recommend flat-leaf parsley with eggplant. Substitute fresh mint or basil.
- Dried oregano: substitute with dried thyme or Italian seasoning.
How to make roasted eggplant
Preheat the oven to 430°F or 220°C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Wash and dry the eggplant, remove the stem, and cut it into 1/3 inch (1 cm) discs.
Arrange the discs on the baking sheet, brush or drizzle them with extra virgin olive oil, and season with salt and black pepper.
Roast eggplant for 20 minutes, flip and roast for 5 to 10 more minutes, then transfer onto a serving platter.
Eggplant discs should be golden, slightly browned, tender, and not shriveled and dry.
To make the dressing, whisk together extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, minced garlic, finely chopped parsley, dried oregano, red pepper flakes, and salt.
Drizzle the dressing on top of the eggplants while they are still hot.
Ideally, set aside 10 to 15 minutes before serving to allow the condiment to infuse the eggplants.
Variations
Diced roasted eggplant:
Preheat the oven to 430°F or 220°C. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Wash and dry the eggplant and remove its stem. Dice eggplant into 3/4 inch (2cm) cubes.
Transfer onto a baking tray, arrange on a single layer without overlapping, and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, salt, and pepper. Toss to spread seasoning.
Tip: Optionally, add some fresh thyme, oregano, or dried herbs.
Roast eggplant for 20 minutes, flip with a spatula, and roast for 5 to 10 more minutes, then transfer onto a serving platter.
Drizzle with the same chimichurri seasoning as above.
Sliced roasted eggplant: Preheat the oven to 430°F or 220°C. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Wash and dry the eggplant and remove its stem. Cut eggplant into 1/3 inch (1 cm) slices.
Transfer onto a baking tray, drizzle or brush with extra virgin olive oil, and add salt and pepper.
Roast for 20 minutes, turn and roast for 5 to 10 more minutes, then transfer onto a serving platter and drizzle with chimichurri.
Tips
- Roast eggplants with the peel on. Eggplant peel is nutritious and gives the baked eggplant structure, preventing it from collapsing in the oven.
- Don’t skimp on oil. Eggplant is like a sponge—it needs oil to roast properly. Brush both sides of the slices with a generous (but not excessive) amount of olive oil for richness, browning, and that luscious melt-in-your-mouth texture.
Questions
In the past, eggplants were left to sit in a colander with salt on top to remove bitterness and drain excess moisture.
However, nowadays, you don’t have to do this because eggplants are selectively bred not to be bitter.
Just sprinkle a pinch of salt on the eggplants before roasting them as a seasoning, not remove water.
However, if you are deep frying the eggplant and want drier, less juicy eggplant slices, you can salt them with coarse salt and let them sit for 1 hour to purge some excess water.
Then rinse them and pat them dry with a paper towel. Don’t use fine salt because it penetrates the eggplant making it too salty.
If you make roasted eggplants, there’s no need to let them sit in salt because their water will evaporate while the slices cook in the oven.
Yes, leave the skin on eggplants when you bake them. The skin is where the nutrients are, and it also gives structure to the eggplants.
Discs: eggplant discs are ideal for serving as an appetizer or side dish, with a simple dressing of olive oil, minced garlic, parsley, and vinegar, or gratin with a crunchy breadcrumb mixture on top. Eggplant discs are also excellent for our breaded eggplant recipe, like in eggplant parmesan, and for making eggplant pizza.
Cubes or dice: eggplant cubes are ideal for making other recipes, such as eggplant pasta (Italian pasta alla Norma), eggplant curry, caponata, eggplant pasta salad, and rice salad, for putting in a wrap or serving on crostini bread. Diced eggplant is also suitable as a side dish.
Long slices: eggplant slices are ideal for making famous Italian eggplant parmigiana or for using in a sandwich. Eggplant slices are also suitable as a side dish.
Boats: eggplant boats are ideal for making baba ganoush (eggplant dip) and eggplant soup.
Make Ahead & Storage
Make ahead: roasted eggplant discs topped with our chimichurri sauce is an excellent recipe to make ahead because you can serve them at room temperature.
Refrigerator: keep leftovers in an airtight container or on the serving platter covered in plastic wrap for 3 days. Take them out of the fridge 15 minutes before eating.
Freezer: let them cool down completely, then arrange the slices on a platter without overlapping and freeze. After a couple of hours, you can transfer the frozen eggplant slices into a freezing bag.
Alternatively, if you don’t have much time or space to do this, you can arrange the baked eggplant slices in a freezing bag, on top of each other, but with a piece of parchment paper between each slice.
More eggplant recipes
If you tried this Roasted Eggplant or any other recipe on our blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let us know how it goes in the comments. We love hearing from you!
Roasted Eggplant
Ingredients
- 2 medium eggplants
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- ⅓ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
For the seasoning
- 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar or other vinegar
- 1 clove garlic minced
- ¼ cup parsley finely chopped
- ¼ teaspoons dried oregano
- ⅛ teaspoon red pepper flakes
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 430°F or 220°C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.Wash and dry 2 medium eggplants, remove the stems, and cut them into ⅓ inch (1 cm) discs.
- Arrange the discs on the baking sheet, brush them with 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, and season with ⅓ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon black pepper.
- Roast 20 minutes, turn and roast 10 more minutes, then transfer onto a serving platter. Eggplant discs should be golden, slightly browned, and tender, but not dry.
For the seasoning
- To a small bowl add, 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, 1 clove garlic (minced), ¼ cup parsley (chopped), ¼ teaspoons dried oregano, ⅛ teaspoon red pepper flakes, and ¼ teaspoon salt.Stir well and set aside.
- Drizzle with seasoning while they are still hot. Ideally set aside 15 minutes before serving, to allow the condiment to infuse the eggplants.
Video
Notes
- Eggplant: Globe eggplants or Italian eggplants. Substitute graffiti, Japanese, Chinese, fairy tale, and white eggplant.
- Red wine vinegar: substitute white wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, or balsamic vinegar.
- Parsley: Substitute fresh mint or basil.
- Dried oregano: substitute with dried thyme or Italian seasoning.
Nutrition
Hi! We are Nico & Louise
We’re here to share delicious, easy, and healthy plant-based recipes (vegetarian & vegan) 🌿✨.
Welcome to our blog, we are glad you are here.
can you roast eggplant in air fryer?
Hi Michael, indeed you can. We wrote a guide here: https://theplantbasedschool.com/air-fryer-eggplant/ (I highly recommend to cut the eggplant into cubes, not discs).
Kindest, Louise
Thank you. This recipe is so simple to make, and the result is refreshing, pretty on the dish, and makes a great sandwich, too. Makes me realize I have “misunderstood” or misused parsley in the past. Now I’ll look for more recipes to appreciate it.
Delicious! I was trying to figure out what to do with my eggplant. This was easy to pull of and yummy!
I’m so happy you liked it, thank you for your comment!
Best, Louise
The parsley really adds some freshness. I may have had some proportions off on oregano and chili flakes because I eyeballed it, but it was still delicious. I kept some reserved and spread out on top on a “pizza quesadilla” and it was all good.
Yup..made this too, as an appie for friends. Went over really well. I haven’t cooked with eggplant much, so loving the opportunity, and this was easy, company-pleasing and tasty…thanks again!
Wonderful, Phil, I’m very happy to hear!
You’re our new taste tester. Thank you again for your support, it means a lot to us.
Best,
Louise
These are delicious…as are every recipe of yours that I make
Each morning I think about what veggies I have and then look you up and I get so many ideas…
Thank you for giving me so much pleasure…..you are the BEST X
Linda, thank you for this heartwarming comment!
We’re so delighted you like our recipes – and that it helps you use those leftover veggies too 😉
Happy to have you here. All the best,
Louise