Do I really need to salt and drain the eggplant?

Hello all,

I just bought some eggplant from the farmer's market and I'm going to experiment by making an eggplant stack(cheese, tomato, basil) of some kind.

Will the eggplant be less bitter if salted and drained for hours?

Also, I'm debating the stovetop vs. oven fry. Suggestions?

Thanks.

I have read for years about how to make an eggplant less bitter, but I have read more recently that if you purchase an eggplant that is bitter, there is nothing that you can do to make it less bitter. I've read that in multiple publications (I believe Cook's Illustrated and possibly Bon Appetit).

I read both in magazines and online that to avoid getting a bitter eggplant, choose eggplants that are lighter in weight. The heavier ones are apparently older and have more seeds which leads to the bitterness.

On the other hand, you can simply buy Japanese eggplants which are not bitter at all.

I was always under the impression that the seeds are the source of the bitterness. Salting and draining removes much of the water content, which would make your final dish very watery and soupy.

Best,
Michael

I've never understood the need to salt and drain eggplant. In the interest of Personal Food Science I did a simple two group experiment with with/without salt. The results showed no significant difference.

If you object to the flavor of unsalted, drained eggplant, try using younger plants or other varieties. I usually use the small ones (or the Sicilian when available) and no one has complained. BTW, I've smoked some larger ones this summer on the WSM (an hour or so) and they make fine baba ghanouj.

I seem to recall (perhaps delusionally) that at least for grilling purposes, the salted/drained eggplant held up better, whereas the untreated eggplant slices were more likel to fall apart. On the bitterness side, I can't comment. I have mostly salted and drained, and occasionally foregone it, and I can't recall noticing the difference in a big way.

Another eggplant tip: cook the slices for a couple of minutes in the microwave on paper towels -- they'll drain a lot of liquid and won't need to be fried for as long. This will in turn absorb less oil (OK, that's not ALWAYS a good thing, if that's where your flavor is coming from), and cook more quickly.

Nowadays, generally not. Most if not all varieties sold widely are in my experience not very bitter at all, though there are varieties one can grow which are. I grew some last summer that were extremely bitter and salting and draining made them a bit less so and, all in all, quite delicious.

As others note, however, removing some of the water will change how the eggplant holds up in frying, etc. And as Choey says, smaller is usually better.

For what (little) it may be worth, I could only find large ones yesterday and had a hankering for kashk-e-bademjan, a Persian eggplant dish. Contrary to (more or less) received wisdom, they were large and I did nothing to them either to relieve them of suspected bitterness or even water/seeds. I roasted them and then proceeded to make the dish. (The ingredient list is blessedly short: onions, a little mint, and kashk--a very thick, salty, whey. Had the eggplants not been good, there would have been little to hide the problem.) No bitterness and the little liquid that the roasting brought out wasn't more than a couple tablespoons between two large eggplants. So I'm inclined to do no salting in future.

I was told by a chef once that you can tell if the eggplant is male or female by the 'bellybutton' on the bottom end of the 'plant. Females will be more bitter because they have more seeds, and males less so The male plant will have an oblong bellybutton and the female's will be circular. I have used this trick for awhile now and don't really have problems with bitterness.

Also, I like oven frying because the final product is less oily and it's faster - just lay them all out and turn once instead of many batches in olive oil on the stovetop.

Thank you so much to those who replied. I did have small eggplants that were easy to peel.

Instead of my creative stack(READ LAZY), I opted for the parmesan preparation. And, though my career waitress friend always mocked the high numbers of "parm" orders she received in our native south side Italian restaurants in Chicago, the outcome was divine.

I cook for two, so only one small eggplant, dipped in egg and inseasoned(by me) breadcrumbs, then fried on the stove top with hot olive oil (a lot), and finally layered with parm, mozz, salt, pepper, and additional herbs, was enough. I really could not believe how the beauty of the texture of the eggplant (not mushy, nice bite) and the crispness of the breading, with chunky tomatoes, imported parm and plain 'ole part-skim, low moisture mozz, seasoning (+fresh basil chiffonade thrown over freshly baked casserole), came together.

Apparently, late summer is the best time for the eggplant from the market?

Thanks for the advice, I did NOT salt and drain because of you. It took less than 40 minutes to prepare and approx. 30 minutes to bake in the 400* oven.