Korean-style eggplant: ingredients, recipe with photos, cooking features

How to cook eggplant

To prepare any eggplant salads, you should choose young vegetables in which the seeds are almost invisible. Such fruits are not only more delicate in taste, but also practically do not taste bitter. But still, salads from raw eggplants are not prepared; the vegetables are first boiled or fried.

If you come across slightly overripe fruits, the eggplants will need to be pre-treated to remove the bitterness. To do this, sprinkle the sliced eggplants with salt, mix and leave for half an hour. Then you will need to squeeze out the juice and rinse the vegetables. This treatment will remove the bitter taste.

The second processing option is to pour well-salted boiling water over chopped eggplants. And after waiting for half an hour, they are washed and squeezed.

You need to cut the eggplants for the Korean salad into long, narrow pieces. There is no need to cut off the skins of young vegetables. The remaining ingredients are also cut into thin strips; you can use a special grater for Korean salads for slicing.

Advice! To season eggplant salad, you can buy a ready-made spice mix for cooking carrots in Korean. When purchasing, please note that this seasoning can be hot or mild, choose according to your taste.

In order for the salad to acquire a specific taste, you cannot do without the use of spices. Be sure to use vinegar, you can use apple or wine vinegar, but regular table vinegar will work just fine. Soy sauce complements the taste of the dish well. From dry spices, it is recommended to choose ground coriander, black and red pepper. Fresh or dry garlic is almost always added to the salad.

The salad should be allowed to brew before serving. The minimum infusion time is 2 hours, but you can leave it for a longer period. In the refrigerator, the salad will keep well in a tightly closed container for 2-4 weeks.

Interesting facts: surprisingly, from a botanical point of view, eggplants are not vegetables, but berries. Moreover, their closest “relatives” are tomatoes and potatoes.

Cooking process

In order to cook Korean-style eggplants in a spicy sauce, two cutting options are used: the vegetable is cut into large slices (2–2.5 cm thick) or more classic strips. Both options are good and do not affect the taste of the finished dish in any way. Lightly sprinkle the vegetable slices with salt and leave for ten minutes. Then rinse the vegetables, lightly squeeze and fry in a frying pan in small batches to give the pieces an even color on all sides. Cut the green onions into small rings, the hot pepper into tiny cubes, and crush the garlic in a mortar or press.

In the remaining oil in a frying pan, heat the hot pepper for a few seconds, add garlic and grated ginger, mix thoroughly and steam for 15 seconds. Next, add teriyaki sauce, vinegar and salt if desired. Add chopped onion, fried eggplant pieces, and mix everything well again. Fry them for 20 seconds, pour in the starch diluted in water, let them boil and turn off the heat. The finished dish is very tasty with fresh tomatoes, country style potatoes and traditionally with boiled rice.

Korean eggplant salad with fried vegetables

Let's prepare spicy eggplants in Korean. We will prepare this version of the salad from fried eggplants.

600-700 gr. eggplant;
2 pods of bell pepper;
2 onions;
1 carrot;
4 cloves of garlic;
1 small bunch of parsley;
2 tablespoons of dry spice mixture for Korean carrots;
4 tablespoons vinegar (9%);
4-6 tablespoons of vegetable oil for frying;
salt, hot pepper to taste.

Cut the eggplants into cubes, place them in a bowl, sprinkle with salt and mix well. Cover the salted eggplants with a flat plate and place a weight on top. We leave the eggplants under pressure in the refrigerator for a day.

Advice! You don't need to add too much salt, otherwise the eggplants will turn out tough.

Squeeze the juice out of the eggplants using just your hands or gauze. Pour oil into a frying pan and fry the eggplants until tender. Carefully remove the finished eggplants from the frying pan using a slotted spoon, trying to leave the oil in the frying pan.

Primary preparation of ingredients

To quickly cook eggplants in Korean, cut them into long strips no more than two centimeters thick, lightly sprinkle with salt, and leave for 15 minutes. Next, rinse the slices under running water using a colander and lightly squeeze the pieces to remove excess water (you can also pat them dry with a paper towel). Cut sweet peppers, seeded, into the same strips, do the same with carrots, and chop the onion into half rings. The snack will look more impressive if it consists of pieces of the same shape.

Pass the garlic through a crush and mix with as finely chopped herbs as possible, add sugar mixed with lemon juice and soy sauce, then spices and vegetable oil. Mix the mixture thoroughly with a fork - this will be the sauce for the appetizer in which the vegetables will be pickled.

Boiled eggplants with carrots and onions

If you limit the amount of fat in your diet, then you shouldn’t fry vegetables; let’s prepare a salad of boiled eggplants with carrots and onions.

2 eggplants;
1 large carrot;
1 large onion;
Parsley and celery to taste;
1 pod of hot pepper;
2-3 cloves of garlic.

Marinade:

100 ml vegetable oil;
50 ml table vinegar (9%);
2 tablespoons granulated sugar;
1 teaspoon ground coriander;
1 teaspoon mustard seeds;
0.5 teaspoon ground hot red pepper;
2 peas each of allspice and black pepper;
salt to taste.

Cut the eggplants into halves or slices. Sprinkle with salt and leave for 20-30 minutes. Then squeeze out the juice.

Boil water, immerse the prepared eggplants in boiling water and cook for 5 minutes at low boil, drain in a colander, let cool and dry.

Cut the onion into thin half rings and chop the garlic into small cubes. Finely chop the hot capsicum (we determine the amount of pepper to taste). Finely chop the greens, grate the carrots into thin strips on a special grater. Mix all the ingredients.

In a separate bowl, mix vegetable oil with vinegar, sugar and all the spices indicated in the list of ingredients. Pour the marinade over the salad and mix. We press it with a press and put it in the refrigerator for several hours, or you can leave it overnight.

Korean eggplant with sesame seeds

Another option for cooking eggplants is baking. Let's prepare Korean baked eggplants with sesame seeds.

4 eggplants;
2 bell peppers;
200 gr. prepared Korean carrots;
4-5 cloves of garlic;
1 bunch of green onions;
1 lemon;
6 tablespoons of soy sauce;
salt, spices for Korean carrots to taste;
2 tablespoons sesame seeds.

Wash the eggplants and peppers well. Cut off the stem of the eggplant and remove the seeds from the pepper. Cut the eggplant into slices 0.5-0.7 cm thick. Cut the peppers in half.

Eggplants in marinade

The process of preparing pickled eggplants in Korean can be divided into two stages:

Slicing vegetables. Cut 1 kg of eggplant into squares, boil in salted water (no more than 3 minutes) and drain in a colander. Grate carrots (250 g) with long noodles, chop three onions randomly, and cut 250 g of sweet pepper into strips. Crush one head of garlic in a garlic press.
Preparing the marinade. Pour half a glass of oil and vinegar (75 g) into a saucepan and heat. Add 2 tablespoons of sugar, half a tablespoon of salt and half a teaspoon of ground pepper. Heat over low heat until the salt and sugar dissolve.

Combine all the salad ingredients and leave to marinate for 12 hours, stirring occasionally during this time.

The prepared snack is stored in the refrigerator. For winter harvesting, it should be additionally sterilized.

Salad with cucumber and radish

This vegetable salad is made from eggplants with the addition of cucumbers and green radish.

2 eggplants;
1 carrot (large);
1 bell pepper;
1 small green radish;
1 onion;
2 cucumbers;
30 gr. cilantro;
1 pod of hot pepper;
1-2 teaspoons ground red pepper;
2 teaspoons ground coriander;
1 teaspoon ground black pepper;
1 teaspoon sweet ground paprika;
70 ml soy sauce;
3 tablespoons table vinegar (9%);
salt to taste;
vegetable oil for frying.

Wash all vegetables and herbs well and dry. Cut the eggplants into cubes, pour salted boiling water over them for half an hour, then drain the water and, after letting the eggplants cool, squeeze them out of excess liquid.

Peel the remaining vegetables, cut carrots, green radishes, cucumbers and bell peppers into large strips. Chop the onion into thin half rings, finely chop the hot pepper. Determine the amount of pepper to taste. Add finely chopped greens.

Add the mixture of spices indicated in the list of ingredients to the salad, add salt and mix. Let it sit for half an hour.

While the vegetables are steeping, fry the eggplants in a small amount of oil. Mix the fried eggplants with the rest of the vegetables. Season the salad with soy sauce and vinegar. Let it sit in the refrigerator for at least two hours.

As a side dish

One of the most delicious Korean eggplant recipes in Asia is a version in which the vegetables are lightly fried in a spicy teriyaki-based sauce with the addition of ginger root. Perhaps this is where the beauty of Asian cuisine lies. To prepare a dish for two servings you will need the following set of ingredients:

Four eggplants.
One hot pepper (pod no more than 8 cm long).
1/2 tbsp. l. ground paprika.
One hundred grams of vegetable oil (Asians often use sesame oil).
1 tablespoon cornstarch and 50 grams of water. This Korean-style eggplant recipe uses exactly this type of starch; you should not replace it with potato or rice.
A few green onions.
Four cloves of garlic.
60 grams of teriyaki sauce.
30 grams of rice vinegar.
1 heaped teaspoon of grated fresh ginger (if necessary, you can replace 1/3 teaspoon of ground dried).

Korean-style eggplants with zucchini

Another version of the salad is prepared with the addition of zucchini. The recipe is simple, but the salad turns out very tasty.

2 young zucchini;
2 eggplants;
2 tomatoes;
300 gr. prepared carrots in Korean style;
parsley, dill, lettuce;
2-3 cloves of garlic;
0.5 cups apple cider vinegar;
0.5 cups vegetable oil;
50 gr. Sahara;
seasoning for Korean carrots to taste;
salt to taste.

We wash the vegetables and dry them. Cut the eggplants into cubes, add salt, and leave to steep for 20-30 minutes. Then rinse and squeeze. Place the eggplants in a frying pan with oil and fry until tender. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon.

We cut the zucchini into the same cubes and fry in the same pan as the eggplants. Cool the prepared vegetables and mix. Add prepared Korean carrots and chopped garlic. Finely chop the dill and parsley and add to the salad.

Make the dressing by mixing oil with vinegar and seasoning. Pour the dressing over the salad, mix and place in the refrigerator to marinate for two hours. Cover flat serving plates with lettuce leaves, lay out the prepared vegetable mixture without liquid and serve.