baked eggplant slices
bake eggplant in oven
oven baked eggplant slices
This baked eggplant recipe or melanzane al forno as known in Italian is a super simple, 5 minute prep side dish. If you love eggplant then you will love this recipe! It's vegan, gluten free, sugar free and dairy free and this homemade pizza sauce with the juicy baked cherry tomatoes is mouthwatering!
How to make this baked eggplant recipe
I used one eggplant in this recipe. Simply slice it up into as equal sized slices as you can. No need for perfectly sliced circles as long as they more or less the same it will make for even cooking. You don't want some cooking or burning because they are too thin and the others not cooked yet because they are too thick.
- Lay the eggplant slices in an oven tray
- Season with salt & pepper and a drizzle of olive (no need to over do it, there's more coming after)
- Add the pizza sauce, as much as you want
- Add dried basil spice or oregano
- Cherry tomatoes
- Another drizzle of olive oil and seasoning
- Bake till done
Sauce
Which type of tomato sauce you use in this baked eggplant is entirely up to you. My advise is to make sure that the sauce is thick so it doesn't create a soggy eggplant. I remember when eggplants had to drained with salt, that wasn't long ago but now because vegetables are grown differently (so I read somewhere) they no longer need to be drained?!
At first I chose to ignore that thinking how can you not drain it in salt? How will you get rid of the liquid if not by draining, well it works!
Homemade Pizza Sauce
In this recipe I used a homemade pizza sauce for topping so you could be fooled that they were mini pizza's 🙂 Okay I take that back because these are not pizza but you know what I mean 🙂 I would hate to mention the word pizza and then you make them and say 'this is not pizza' because you would be right, but the sauce will have you imagining that it's pizza!
If you haven't tried my pizza sauce then do give it a try because it's thick, saucy, tasty, sugar free, so versatile you will wonder why you never had it ready to go before. I've shared 2 different ways of how you can make your own homemade pizza sauce.
Why you should make these baked eggplants
Firstly this recipe is authentic to My Anosmic Kitchen so it's not something that's been done before. I didn't see an idea, inspiration nothing. Let me explain how this came about.
We absolutely love eggplants so when my husband brought some home the other day I had no idea what I was going to make but he solved that problem for me and decided he wanted fried eggplant. Now, we don't always eat the same thing, he wants the eggplants fried and I prefer them baked. Both are good but the latter is healthier and different I think 🙂
I had 2 eggplants left to make whatever I wanted the only problem is I didn't know what I was gonna make so I started by slicing it and then went with my own flow, season, opened the fridge saw some cherry tomatoes and pizza sauce, done. All I knew was that I wanted it baked and quick! Let me tell you, they delivered ten fold and more! From my kitchen to yours recipes.
- authentic
- quick
- simple
- healthy
- homemade
- vegan
- light satisfying side dish
Baking time
This entire recipe took me all of 15 minutes to make. Once you get the tray in the oven, which you set to 180 degrees Celsius, put the tray in middle rack and bake for about 10 to 12 minutes before checking. Oven temperatures vary so you just want them to bake till a little crisp but they wont crisp completely otherwise they going to dry out or burn if you leave them too long. The slices are not big enough but that's the whole idea.
Roasting Garlic
Since the oven is on you can also add some garlic cloves and onion to bake if you like just make sure that you give them a generous amount of olive oil especially the garlic. Whenever I have my oven on, I roast garlic and sometimes onion. It saves me from heating the oven just for garlic.
What do I do with roasted garlic?
Add to everything from salads, leftovers, smoothies and even eat it because once garlic is roasted it doesn't have such a strong taste and the health benefits are endless.
Which tomato sauce to use with this baked eggplant?
The reason I made it without cheese and toppings or onion and bacon etc is because although it can also be made as mini pizza's today's recipe was about a non meat dish so I opted for basic simple ingredients. You can use any tomato sauce but I would suggest that you try not to add the liquid of the tomatoes if you are using it from the can because you don't want to end up with soggy eggplant bake.
The perfect tomato base would be a pizza tomato sauce because it has no liquid in or you can also use passata. Here I have used my homemade pizza sauce which works perfectly! If you have not tried this sauce or used it then do give it a try it's nice and thick and lasts forever in day!
Other eggplant recipes?
- Vegetarian Eggplant Slices
- Roasted Balsamic Eggplant
- Baby eggplant and potato recipe
- Easy Recipe – Stuffed Chorizo Eggplant
- Brinjal meatloaf
- Jamie Oliver’s Aubergine Parmigiana Recipe
- The Best Eggplant & Spicy Tofu Recipe & How to Properly Cook Brinjals
- How To Make An Easy Bell Pepper and Eggplant Mix
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Recipe
Baked Eggplant Appetizer
Ingredients
- 1 eggplant
- smoked scamorza cheese or mozarella
- ¼ cup marinara sauce, pizza sauce or passata
- salt and pepper to taste
- olive oil
- garlic & herb seasoning
- fresh basil
Instructions
- Rinse the eggplant, slice and discard the top.
- Slice the eggplant into more or less even circles.
- Lay the slices down onto an oven baking tray
- Sprinkle with a generous amount of salt and pepper
- Add spoonfuls of tomato sauce making sure they are all topped off and spread it out onto each slice. They don;t need to be perfect.
- Add the cherry tomatoes, some can be sliced if they bigger and leave the tiny ones whole.
- Give it the last seasoning of salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.
- Bake for 15 minutes on 180 C until everything is nice and crisp, It should not go longer or they will dry out and you want to retain the moisture. If you not happy with the roast color after 15 minutes, up the oven heat to 200 or 220 C and leave them for 3 minutes then take them out.
- Depending on your oven, if you do increase the heat for 3 minutes, watch them!
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