Content
Eggplants or "blue" have long been loved in Russia, despite the fact that in most of our country this vegetable can be grown only in greenhouse conditions, it is very thermophilic. Blanks from them are so popular that in August - September, most housewives buy a myriad of eggplants, using low seasonal prices for them, even if they did not manage to grow a decent harvest of these valuable vegetables in their garden. Well, if the year was fruitful, then all forces are rushed to find as many interesting and seductive recipes for dishes and eggplant blanks as possible. After all, they can be marinated, and fermented, and salted, and stuffed.
Traditionally, the most popular is eggplant caviar... It should be noted that this dish, especially in the form of canned food, is originally Russian, or rather, even Soviet, since it was invented by food technologists in the last century.
But every good housewife considers it her duty to at least somehow, but to diversify its composition and preparation, and to bring its own zest to the taste of eggplant caviar, which is familiar to everyone from childhood. Eggplant caviar, prepared by passing all or most of the ingredients through a meat grinder, is the most traditional type of this preparation. Of course, in recent years, many kitchen tools have been invented to make life easier for the hostess. But it is the use of an ordinary meat grinder that allows you to get that very ideal homogeneous structure of eggplant caviar, in which even tiny pieces of natural vegetables can be present.
Why eggplant caviar is valued
Eggplant has many virtues. Perhaps, only people who have a pronounced allergy to this vegetable do not like them - in our time, which just does not happen. Most of all, eggplant dishes are appreciated by women who watch their appearance, figure, weight. After all, the blue ones are distinguished by low calorie content and at the same time exquisite taste. In addition, the times are gone when, before cooking, eggplants had to be soaked for a long time in order to free them from the bitterness accumulating in the peel.
Eggplant caviar contains a significant amount of fiber, which has a beneficial effect on the digestion process itself. Eggplants are also rich in potassium, therefore they are useful for use with heart problems, gout, reduce cholesterol and blood sugar levels. Caviar contains many B vitamins, vitamin PP, ascorbic acid, as well as iron, zinc, manganese and copper. Eggplants are able to normalize water-salt metabolism in the body.
100 grams of commercial eggplant caviar contains on average:
- Water - 73.6 g
- Carbohydrates - 5.1 g
- Dietary fiber - 3.8 g
- Fat - 13.3 g
- Proteins - 1.7 g
- Caloric content - 148 Kcal.
It is only necessary to take into account that eggplants tend to absorb vegetable fats in large quantities. Therefore, if the calorie content of the dish is of paramount importance to you, then you need to pay attention to the amount of sunflower oil used in recipes. It is better to do without it at all, or use it to a minimum.
The easiest and fastest recipes
The most classic and at the same time easy-to-prepare recipe for eggplant caviar is the following:
Composition:
- Eggplant - 5 kg;
- Ripe tomatoes - 2 kg;
- Bulgarian sweet pepper - 2 kg;
- Salt, garlic to taste;
- Sunflower oil to taste.
After washing in cool water, peel the eggplants, if desired, cut into pieces of any size and shape and boil in salted water until they become soft.
Cut the tomatoes into small pieces. Pepper, previously cleaned of seed chambers and stalks, also cut in any form.
Scroll the eggplants separately through a meat grinder, then a mixture of tomatoes and peppers. Then fry the peppers with tomatoes in sunflower oil with the addition of salt and spices of your choice for 3-5 minutes. At the last stage, combine them with grated and boiled eggplants, add finely chopped garlic (through a meat grinder or garlic press) and stir everything thoroughly.
Put the mixture over medium heat, bring to a boil and cook for 40 minutes with regular stirring. Pour the boiling mixture into the prepared jars immediately and sterilize: liter jars - about 30 minutes, half-liter - about 20 minutes. After that, the caviar can be rolled up and stored.
What is good about this recipe, besides the ease of preparation, is that it can be called dietary, since eggplants are cooked in a boiled way.
But if you want to cook eggplant caviar, the absorption of which, in general, will not affect your figure and, apart from benefit, will not bring anything, then follow the following recipe:
Take 1-2 kg of eggplant, wash well and bake with the skin in the oven on the grill or tray. After the vegetables have cooled, remove the skin from them, cut into oblong pieces and turn through a meat grinder. To the mass of grated eggplant, add a few tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon or orange juice, finely chopped herbs, according to your tastes and salt. Mix everything well. If you wish, you can add a few minced onions with garlic cloves. This eggplant caviar stored only in the refrigerator, but it is very tasty and healthy.
Multi-ingredient eggplant caviar recipes
If you are an exquisite gourmet and the richness of taste and smell is more important to you, it is necessary to give preference to recipes when making eggplant caviar for the winter through a meat grinder, where all vegetable components are fried separately in vegetable oil before mixing. It will be impossible to resist the taste and aroma of such a dish. Try this eggplant caviar recipe, for example.
Required Ingredients:
- Eggplant - 4.5 kg;
- sweet pepper - 2 kg;
- onions - 800 grams;
- carrots - 1 kg;
- tomatoes - 2 kg;
- parsley - 50 grams;
- salt, chilli and vegetable oil to taste.
First, you need to do the preparatory work: wash and peel the eggplants, remove the tails and all the seeds from the pepper, peel the onions and carrots, wash the tomatoes and cut them into several pieces, wash the parsley.
Pepper and eggplant should be cut into long pieces lengthwise, add salt and leave for several hours.
Then oil is poured into a frying pan, calcined until a barely noticeable haze appears, and chopped and slightly squeezed eggplants are placed there. After they are fried, they are passed through a meat grinder and folded into a large cauldron with a thick bottom. Peppers are fried separately in the same skillet, then they are also passed through a meat grinder and added to the eggplant. Onions are first passed through a meat grinder and only then fried and also added to vegetables.
Tomatoes are fried last, a little water is added to the pan and they are stewed for 10-15 minutes until thickened.
After all the ingredients are mixed in a cauldron, put it on medium heat for boiling. Stir the mixture constantly so that it does not burn. Taste and add minced parsley 10 minutes before cooking. The caviar should be stewed for about an hour. The boiling vegetable mass must be quickly spread over pre-sterilized jars, closed with sterilized lids, turned over and wrapped. In this case, additional sterilization of canned food is not needed.
For a variety of taste, when making eggplant caviar through a meat grinder, various ingredients can be added to this recipe: pumpkin, parsnip roots, celery, apples and even walnuts. The number of additional elements introduced should be equal in weight from 1/10 to 1/5 of the number of eggplants used.
If you want to get the exquisite taste of eggplant caviar, combined with healthiness, try not frying all the vegetables in the above recipe, but baking them in the oven before chopping through a meat grinder.
Vinegar recipe
Many housewives traditionally make winter preparations using vinegar - after all, it allows, without using sterilization, to increase the shelf life of eggplant caviar. In addition, the taste of the finished eggplant caviar becomes spicy and unusual. Using the recipe below, prepare a new dish that will delight you on a frosty winter day.
In order to bring your plans to life, you will need:
- 2 kg eggplant;
- 1 kg of ripe tomatoes;
- 1 kg of sweet pepper;
- 0.8 kg of carrots;
- 0.5 kg of onions;
- 1 head of garlic;
- 80 grams of refined butter;
- 1 tbsp. a spoonful of salt;
- 2 tbsp. tablespoons of sugar;
- ground pepper - to taste;
- 100 ml of table (apple cider) vinegar 9%.
Pepper to clear from the seed chamber and tails, eggplants and tomatoes from the skin and cut all vegetables into large pieces. Then grind with a meat grinder.
You can also grind carrots and onions with garlic through a meat grinder. Mix all the ingredients of the recipe in a saucepan with a thick bottom and simmer over low heat. After boiling, add salt, ground pepper, sugar and any additional herbs and spices to your taste. Simmer for about 50 minutes. Then add vinegar to the pan and heat for another ten minutes. Still boiling caviar needs to be laid out in pre-sterilized jars and twisted. Turn the jars, wrap them up and leave to cool for 24 hours.
The average cooking time for eggplant caviar according to any of the recipes is about three hours. Thus, you will spend relatively little time, but in return you will get the opportunity to periodically enjoy a delicious and healthy snack in winter, reminiscent of the hot summer.
