We prepare dried eggplants for future use
Many people in the fall think about how to save eggplants for the winter. They are harvested in different ways: in the form of preservation, eggplant caviar, even frozen. A less rare way of harvesting eggplants is drying, although a large amount of nutrients are retained in the vegetable. In our country, this method of harvesting "blue" is not very common, but in Turkey or Italy, dried eggplants can always be found in stores.
Dry eggplants in the same way as carrot, greens of dill and parsley are possible in a city apartment. This process is not at all complicated and everyone can choose for themselves the most convenient method of drying "blue" ones.
Read the article in the topic: eggplants for the winter like mushrooms!
How to dry eggplants?
You can make dried preparations from eggplants with different tastes using special marinades and spices. If desired, gourmets can make bacon-flavored dried eggplant and serve thin straws as a snack in winter.
Before cooking, dried eggplants should be soaked in water and then cooked like mushrooms.
Dried eggplant "meat"
4 small fruits or 2 large ones are peeled and cut into thin strips. For convenience, they wield a sharp knife or use a special attachment on a vegetable cutter. If the eggplant is very large, the strip can be further cut into 2 or 4 pieces.
Now you need to prepare the marinade, for which half a glass of olive oil, a third of a glass of soy sauce or apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons of honey, a quarter of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and a teaspoon of paprika are mixed in a separate bowl.
Prepared eggplants are poured with marinade and left for 2 hours. Next, the strips are blotted with a paper towel and placed in an electric dryer. At a temperature of 40 degrees, the strips of eggplant are dried for about a day. Dried eggplants are ready when they have a characteristic crunch.
Dried eggplants "like mushrooms"
Eggplants, cooked for the winter, taste very much like mushrooms, and their appearance is sometimes misleading.
For this drying method, only young eggplants are suitable, which contain a minimum of seeds. The washed fruits are peeled and cut into thin circles. The blanks are neatly strung on a thread and laid low on a baking sheet.
How to dry eggplants like this? Just. The oven is heated to 160 degrees and the eggplants are kept for about 10 minutes, no longer. Next, the low eggplants are removed from the oven and hung in a dry place for final drying.
Dry eggplants should be poured into glass dishes or cloth bags.
Salted dried eggplant
Eggplant can be dried with food pretreatment. The peeled fruits are cut into rings of medium thickness and sprinkled with salt, leaving them for 15 minutes. This is the standard way to remove excess bitterness from the pulp.
Next, the eggplant rings are washed in water and placed in boiling water for 5 minutes. Hot rings are transferred to cold water and the already cooled ones are thrown onto a sieve to drain excess water.
Next, the eggplants are laid out on a baking sheet and sent to the oven for drying, keeping them for 5 hours at a temperature of 60 degrees.
For consumption, such dried eggplants are soaked in water, after which they are fried.
How to dry eggplants in an electric dryer or oven?
If the house has an electric dryer, it will not be difficult to stock up on a sufficient amount of dried eggplants. The instructions for such a device have detailed information about the method, temperature and drying time.
In the oven, eggplants are dried a little differently. First you need to prepare the fruits, for which they are washed, dried with a towel and the stalks are cut off. Next, the "blue" ones are cut into pieces of the same thickness. It is important that the workpiece cures evenly during drying.
Place the eggplant slices on a baking sheet so that they are freely located over the entire surface. The oven is preheated to 200 degrees and a baking sheet with a workpiece is placed in it. After an hour of drying, the temperature is reduced by half and kept for another 4 hours.
How to store eggplants dried in an electric dryer or oven? It is best to put them in a glass container under the lid to preserve the natural taste. If dry eggplants are stored in cloth bags, they are kept away from strong-smelling foods.
Sun-dried eggplant outdoors
As in the previous drying methods, the eggplants need to be prepared - thoroughly washed and dried. The pulp is cut into thin strips (the stalk is removed) and laid out on a baking sheet so that the slices lie without touching each other. The baking sheet is placed in a place protected from the sun, where there are no drafts. To dry evenly, the eggplants should be turned over, and the drying process itself will take about 5-6 days. To prevent dust and other debris from getting on the eggplants during drying, cover the baking sheet with gauze in one layer.
Slicing eggplant for drying
The methods of slicing eggplants before drying depends on what dishes will be prepared from such a blank:
- Cut into cubes.
If in winter you will cook caviar or stew from dried eggplant, cut the fruits into small cubes for drying. This blank dries well at room temperature for 3-4 days. Faster drying will be in the oven, which takes only 4 hours. - Eggplant straws.
This is the optimal form of eggplant for making salads and soups. Peeled eggplants are rubbed on a grater with large holes and the resulting mass is laid out in a thin layer on clean paper or cloth. Such a blank is stored in fabric bags away from products with a strong aroma. - Drying eggplant halves.
In Turkey and Italy, this form of eggplant is used for stuffing with fillings. For drying, the pulp is cut from each half, leaving a wall 0.5 cm thick. - Drying whole eggplants.
In this case, small fruits are used, which are kept outdoors for a long time. In a well-dried eggplant, you can hear the clatter of seeds inside when shaking.