Our 29 Favorite Eggplant Recipes

This eggplant dish combines pickled onions, sweet cherries, toasted hazelnuts, creamy lebneh and herbs.

Grilling the eggplant for this simple, hearty dish lends both flavor and texture. Make sure the eggplant slices are completely tender before they come off the grill; they won't soften more in the oven.

Seared eggplant cooked in a rich coconut broth makes this savory vegetable curry a knockout in the kitchen.

Jerry Traunfeld created this gorgeous gratin to highlight ripe, juicy tomatoes and other late-summer vegetables, which moisten the crispy bread crust as they bake.

Deep-fried eggplant is soaked in a mixture of dashi, mirin, sake, and soy to infuse it with dynamic flavors and create a juicy texture.

Chef Efisio Farris says that his mother used only eggplants from the first pick of the season (le primizie) for this dish because of their supple texture and earthy-sweet flavor without a hint of bitterness. But if you don't have the primizie option, you should seek out firm, heavy eggplants with smooth, evenly colored skin. Check for ripeness by pressing them lightly; if this leaves an imprint, the eggplant is ready to use.

Nothing beats the creamy texture of eggplant when it's been cooked over heat for a long time. Add in some tomato, the zing of pomegranate molasses, generous handfuls of fresh herbs and the pop of pomegranate seeds, and you have something truly special.

Golden eggplant slices sandwich tangy, melting cheese, all set off by a fast tomato sauce flavored with the unusually complementary tarragon.

This eggplant Parmesan is all it should be: delicate slices of fried eggplant nestled in a bright, tangy tomato sauce, layered with gooey fresh mozzarella. The best part is the exceptionally crisp topping, made with dry bread crumbs.

Joël Robuchon ingeniously softens spongy eggplant by steaming it instead of sautéing it in oil. "Usually, cooked eggplant absorbs so much oil and becomes full of fat," he says.

Terrific as a salad or a spread for flatbread, adzhapsandali is like a Georgian version of ratatouille. Grilling the eggplant gives the dish a luscious, smoky flavor.

Velvety eggplant is paired with a tart-yet-earthy relish of toasted walnuts, cilantro, and pomegranate seeds. Toasting the walnuts brings out their full nutty, slightly bitter character and plays well against the bright pomegranate seeds, which provide fresh bursts of juice and sweetness.

Eggplant and zucchini cook quickly, absorbing plenty of flavor from the chile-garlic and soy sauces, without getting overly tender. Fresh cilantro adds an extra pop of freshness to the finished stir-fry.

Faux cheeses made with nuts are key to vegan cooking. To stuff these involtini, chef Sean Baker of Gather re-creates the flavor of ricotta by combining pureed raw cashews with nutritional yeast, which has a very savory, almost cheese-like flavor and is available at well-stocked specialty and natural food stores.

Sicily's caponata is a tangy eggplant salad served as a side dish or appetizer. This version adds bits of velvety avocado, full of monounsaturated fats that can help lower cholesterol.

Creamy tahini makes a sumptuous accompaniment to broiled eggplant, while jewel-like pomegranate seeds add a slight crunch.

Eggplant is a good source of vitamins A and C and is low in calories. It's one of the vegetables Clark Frasier likes to serve during colder months, in hearty dishes such as this soup. "As chefs, we tend to think first of root vegetables, but eggplants are also robust in winter."

Chef Kevin Tien of Himitsu in Washington, D.C., brushes eggplant with a sweet yuzu-miso glaze, broils it until smoky and tender, finishes it with a lime-chile-soy vinaigrette with Szechuan peppercorns, and tops it with roasted pumpkin and sesame seeds. 

The creamy Middle Eastern eggplant dip called baba ghanouj is traditionally served with warm pita and an assortment of salads. Here, we top the pita with the dip and a mixture of romaine, tomato, and cucumber for an extraordinarily tasty meal.

Like many Moroccan salads, this super-silky and intensely flavored version of ratatouille is made from spiced or sweetened cooked vegetables that are mashed rather than cut into pieces. Like Italian antipasti, Moroccan salads are often served as an appetizer.

A mix of canned whole peeled tomatoes and tomato puree creates the perfect silky, but still chunky, texture in the sauce. Pomodori pellati tomatoes are hand-peeled, seeded, and processed with salt and basil at peak season, to capture their ripe, sweetly acidic flavor. 

Easy stir fry recipe with eggplant and pork. This quick and simple eggplant recipe is stir-fried with pork and chili garlic sauce.

This sweet and tangy Middle Eastern stew, with falling-apart-tender lamb, is one of wordsmith and perfect host Jesse Sheidlower's favorites. He found it in Nawal Nasrallah's Delights from the Garden of Eden: A Cookbook and a History of the Iraqi Cuisine. "It's a fantastic though little-known cookbook," Sheidlower says. "It's incredibly extensive and provides a lot of cultural and historical background. And it's good to keep in mind that all of this Iraqi culture and history is getting destroyed."

Fried eggplant and honey is a classic combination served across Andalusia, especially in Córdoba. This version is the one José Andrés has on the menu at his Washington, DC, restaurant Jaleo.

Baskets of lightly toasted bread slices and little mustard-yellow terra-cotta bowls filled with caponatina (a finely chopped version of the Sicilian sweet-and-sour eggplant dish caponata) often appear on the tables at Il Bacco Felice soon after guests are seated.

There's a saying in Italy that one should never tell a farmer just how good his cheese and pears taste together (presumably because if he knew, he would hoard them all). In this salad, Opera 02 chef Silvana Baranzoni adds eggplant and walnuts to that beloved duo.

While writing her book, The Glorious Vegetables of Italy, Domenica Marchetti unearthed this classic Sicilian recipe. To make the dish more savory, she adds dried porcini mushrooms to the eggplant, and the porcini soaking liquid to the tomato sauce.

This filling vegetarian pasta is perfect for a cold winter night.

Börek is a Middle Eastern pastry filled with anything from vegetables to cheese and ground meat. For this version, Meltem Conant sautés eggplant, peppers and tomatoes and bakes them in layers of phyllo.