Roasted Eggplant

This is the simplest way to enjoy eggplant! Roasted Eggplant (aubergine in the UK and France) has a perfectly caramelized outside while the inside stays soft and juicy. It’s a versatile vegan eggplant recipe to add to all of your favorite dishes or to serve as a side dish.

This Roasted Eggplant recipe is a really easy way to enjoy everyone’s favorite purple veggie! We roasted unpeeled eggplant cubes simply with extra virgin olive oil, salt, and sweet paprika.  To create a perfectly cooked dish that’s yummy on its own but can also be used in bowls, salads, pasta, or stews. This is also a great base for your favorite vegetarian eggplant recipes!

More About Eggplant

• Eggplants are hearty and delicious while being filled with vitamins A and C, fiber, and potassium. Many people don’t know how to prepare it, though! We have many eggplant recipes, but this one just might be the simplest. Many vegetables can be eaten cooked or raw, eggplant is not one of them. 
• Raw eggplant is tough unpleasant and has no flavor, cooked eggplant, however, becomes, sweet and absorbs all the delicious flavors and spices that you cook it in. 
• Eggplant skin is edible, you don't need to peel eggplant before roasting. We love the texture that the eggplant skin adds to the dishes we prepare. We use unpeeled eggplant in most of our recipes. If you prefer to peel your eggplant, cut the ends off, then use a vegetable peeler to remove the purple skin in long strips.
• Eggplant seeds are also edible, meatier eggplants with fewer seeds are sweeter, but there is no way to know how many seeds an eggplant has you just have to cut into it.  
• Japanese or Chinese Eggplant (the long skinny purple kind)  have fewer seeds and a more delicate flavor, we prefer them in the winter months but enjoy any eggplant variety. 

Does Eggplant Need to Be Salted Before Roasting?

Many home cooks salt their eggplant and leave it to drain in a colander dry for an hour or more before cooking, in order to take make it less bitter, but this step actually isn’t necessary, since the eggplants cultivated today have been bred to eliminate most of their bitterness. We only suggest salting eggplant if you’re going to be frying it as it will help to draw excess moisture and the veggie will absorb less oil.

How to Cut Eggplant for Roasting

Roasted eggplant can be cut into cubes (this is how we usually make it!), rounds (these eggplant slices take longer to cook),  or even sticks to make eggplant fries. Eggplant can be roasted whole for baba ganoush or cut in half. Just make sure to roast it with the cut side down!

How to Roast Eggplant

1. Roasting vegetables is the best way to bring out their amazing natural flavors and sweetness and achieve a perfectly caramelized bite. For this Roasted Eggplant recipe, we kept the skin on and tossed it with olive oil, salt, and sweet paprika.
2. We prefer to mix the eggplant pieces with the oil in a bowl since we add the oil one tablespoon at a time ensuring that all the eggplant cubes get coated with the olive oil. 
3. Avoid overcrowding the baking tray during cooking; this creates pockets of hot air that steam the veggies rather than roasting them! We roast eggplant at high heat (425F). This helps the outside cook fast enough that it seals in the juices to create that perfect outer texture and perfect bite!
4. Once the eggplant is roasted we pull the edges of the parchment paper around the eggplant to form a little packet after it’s done cooking. Letting it rest this way for a bit allows the eggplant to soften further without drying it out.

Different Ways to Spice Eggplant

Eggplant adapts to many different spices, so if you have a favorite blend, it would probably be good in this baked eggplant recipe! We kept the recipe super simple with just salt and sweet paprika, but feel free to make it your own.

• Smoked paprika 
• Homemade Garam Masala
• Za’atar 
• Sumac
• Crazy Good Shawarma Spice Mix 

How to Use Oven-Roasted Eggplant

Any dish that has fresh veggies would be made better with roasted eggplant! We’d add this oven-roasted eggplant into salads, omelets, curries, pizza, pasta dishes, bowls, over quinoa, or in stews. It would make a great appetizer served alongside a trio of sauces to dip the eggplant, like Romesco, Chimichurri, Pesto, Tahini sauce, and Schug. Find our roasted aubergine with tahini, silan, pine nuts, and pomegranate seeds on page 81 of our cookbook Tahini & Turmeric. Colorful and tasty!

How To Store Roasted Eggplant

Store roasted eggplant leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days or in the freezer for up to 3 months.

More Eggplant Recipes 

• High Protein Skillet Eggplant Lasagna
• Eggplant Meatballs with Pomegranate Molasses
• Braised Eggplant in Fresh Tomato Sauce
• Buffalo Eggplant Fries
• Stuffed Eggplant with Fennel and White Beans
• Eggplant Pickle Salad Sandwich

If you enjoyed this recipe, it would help us tremendously if you left us a star rating in the comments below or on the recipe card. Do you have any questions about the recipe? Do you need a swap for any of the ingredients? We are here to help, just leave us a question in the comments below.