Grandma’s pickled eggplant recipe

Are you looking for Grandma’s pickled eggplant recipe? Then you came to the right place because we are going to explain how to make this delicious preparation to accompany many meals, be an appetizer, part of the snack and why not turn it into a main dish.

Preparing pickled foods is a cooking technique widely used in the kitchen and where there are many variants. We can do it with different types of meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, and you can even add fruits.

In fact, this technique was previously used as a way to preserve food when refrigerators or any other way of refrigerating did not exist. Therefore, this is how food was preserved and salt, vinegar or wine was added, ingredients necessary to provide the essential acid.

Technological and industrial advances have changed the meaning of pickle. Its current value no longer lies in its conservation power, but in its ability to provide unmatched texture and flavor to foods.

One of the excellent ingredients to make delicious and quite functional recipes at home are eggplants; These can be cut into slices and made into sandwiches, or you can prepare a great garnish with them, even a delicacy.

Recipe for pickled eggplants to preserve

In this case, we will use them to make pickled eggplants. It takes approximately one hour to prepare and fifteen minutes to cook.

If these eggplants are preserved correctly, they are delicious on toasted bread to accompany an appetizer or as a starter, they will be more than good.

Pickled eggplants are delicious, especially if they are preserved in olive oil, which together with the pickled vinegar gives them an unmatched flavor. Let’s see the ingredients below:

Ingredients

4 units of white or marbled eggplants
2 tbsp. of coarse salt
2 cups of white vinegar
2 cups of water
3 to 4 bay leaves
1 tbsp. ground chili
4 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp. Peppercorns (optional)
1 to 3 tbsp. of Oregano
2 cups of Olive Oil
2 tbsp. Parsley (chopped)

Here we show you how to easily prepare them at home:

Preparation of Abuela’s pickled eggplants

1. We start by choosing the eggplants in excellent condition, this is a fundamental step since they are not always pretty. To do this, we must make sure that when you touch them they feel firm but without being very hard, and their shell must also be shiny and without any type of roughness.
2. Then we cut them into slices of approximately 1 and a half centimeters, always trying to make them all even.
3. Now we place them in a strainer, forming layers with them and we are going to alternate them with the coarse salt, this is essential since the eggplant itself has a bitter taste and by letting them soak with salt, we will be making sure to remove that flavor so disgusting. We let them rest for an hour, then we rinse them very well and squeeze them with our hands and drain them well.
4. On the other hand, we heat the water in a saucepan, the bay leaves and the vinegar.
5. When this mixture boils, add the eggplants and let them cook for five minutes. It may seem like a short time to you, but this is only done to soften it a little, not to cook it. We drain and let it cool.
6. Meanwhile, in a container we mix the ground chili, oregano and chopped garlic cloves.
7. Pour olive oil and mix all the seasonings well.
8. Next step, pour a little of this mixture into the bottom of a glass jar or container with a lid.
9. We alternate the parsley, the mixture, pepper, a little oil and the eggplants. Close the jar tightly and place it in the refrigerator.

The recommendation is to wait 7 days before consuming the pickled Eggplants, so that they completely absorb the exquisite flavor of the entire preparation.
Let’s remember that this tasty recipe completely improves the flavor of any side dish, such as potatoes, rice, tomatoes, etc.

Tricks and tips

• As we had mentioned, it is essential to choose the eggplants correctly to ensure that our recipe turns out the way we want. The larger the eggplants, the greater the risk of them being bitter. It is recommended that they be medium in size.
  No matter how much we choose the smallest eggplants, we must keep in mind that they always have a characteristic bitter flavor. Therefore, if we want to make good pickled eggplants, we must definitely help them remove this flavor because it really is something that is felt a lot on the palate.
• Leaving them to soak with salt helps a lot, you will see that little by little it will start to appear as a brown liquid.
  Another way is to cut the eggplants into slices, sprinkle them with fine salt and place them in a container containing a mixture of water and milk. We let it sit for approximately 1 hour and after this time we rinse well, they will be ready to use. This procedure was used by my grandmother, I assure you that I have not tried pickled eggplants like that anywhere else.
• Another way is to put water with salt and two tablespoons of flour in a container, put the eggplant slices and let them rest for 1 hour. After this time, we remove them and rinse them well, they will be ready to be used.
• In the refrigerator, we can keep this preparation for approximately more than a month.
• It is essential that the jars or containers are well sterilized, since the preservation of the pickle depends on it.

Now we clarify that the ingredients that we gave you before are the ones originally included in this recipe, but if you want to make these Pickled Eggplants a delicacy, you must make them to your liking, removing and adding what you like the most. The variants are endless.