Similar to chicken Parm, eggplant Parmesan is a classic dish of fried, crispy eggplant layered with marinara sauce and cheese and baked until bubbling.
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00:00 Hey, it's Frankie from Delish.
00:02 I'm gonna show you how to make
00:03 one of our most amazing eggplant parms.
00:07 Eggplant parm could be so good,
00:09 but it could also be pretty terrible.
00:11 It depends on the sauce to crunchy eggplant
00:14 to cheese ratio.
00:16 It's hard to find really good eggplant parm
00:18 when you're dining out at restaurants.
00:20 I have my personal favorite.
00:21 But today I get to show you
00:23 how you can make it the best way at home.
00:25 We have our eggplant.
00:27 There are a variety of eggplants that you can use.
00:29 You can use American, you can use an Italian eggplant.
00:32 Why wouldn't we use an Italian eggplant for eggplant parm?
00:36 We're about to salt our eggplant
00:37 and salting eggplant releases some of that bitterness
00:41 that might be present.
00:42 Eggplant is a really high water content vegetable.
00:46 When you add salt to it,
00:47 it's going to pull out a lot of that moisture,
00:50 which is osmosis.
00:51 And it's also going to deeply penetrate
00:54 the eggplant with flavor.
00:55 It will create that crispy eggplant parm
00:58 that you are looking for.
01:01 The cut eggplant go onto a paper towel lined sheet tray.
01:05 I'm going to salt each piece.
01:07 I'm going to layer another piece of paper towel on top
01:09 until I'm done with all the eggplant.
01:12 And then I'm going to put another sheet tray on top of that
01:14 and weigh it down with a good old sturdy cast iron pan.
01:18 And let that sit for about 45 minutes to an hour.
01:21 And now the reveal of the eggplant.
01:24 All of the moisture has been released.
01:27 You can see this paper towel is saturated
01:30 and it's disgusting.
01:31 So we're going to put it aside,
01:33 but it's so exciting because you can't really tell,
01:36 but the eggplant, they're still wet to the touch,
01:38 which is fine, but very so slightly are thinner.
01:43 As far as the breading procedure is concerned,
01:46 this is what is going to make
01:48 these delicious eggplant pop.
01:52 We salted the eggplant, but we need to season in layers.
01:55 I'm going to add one tablespoon of salt
01:57 to the all-purpose flour and whisk that to combine.
02:00 I'm going to whisk my eggs and milk until combined.
02:03 I'm going to fold the Parmesan cheese
02:05 and oregano into pinko.
02:07 Once you coat the eggplant and flour,
02:09 you are going to put it into that whipped egg
02:12 and milk mixture.
02:13 The flour is going to help the egg adhere to the eggplant.
02:18 And from there, you are going to put it in that delicious,
02:21 crunchy coating of breadcrumb and oregano
02:24 and Parmesan cheese.
02:25 Parmesan cheese is going to brown up nicely.
02:28 It's going to get caramelized in that hot oil.
02:32 So it's going to create another barrier
02:34 of crispy, crunchy layer around the eggplant
02:38 in addition to the breadcrumb.
02:39 Breadcrumb is obviously the most important thing
02:43 in this dish besides the cheese and the sauce,
02:46 but panko isn't really that traditional in eggplant parm.
02:50 We are using panko for the obvious reasons
02:52 because it's crispy, it's crunchy,
02:54 it has another layer of texture that people want
02:57 as opposed to using plain breadcrumb.
02:59 There are some tips to making sure
03:01 that this part of the process is as clean as possible.
03:05 When you start with your flour, you would use your tongs,
03:08 dip the eggplant each side into the flour,
03:11 transfer it to the egg, dip each side into the egg,
03:15 and then drop it into the panko mixture
03:17 and use your left hand or your non-dominant hand
03:20 to pat it on because using,
03:23 it's gonna get messy since there's already egg on the tongs,
03:25 the egg's gonna get into the panko,
03:27 it's gonna get all gross and form those little balls
03:29 that you could eat, fry up and eat later,
03:30 but just keep it clean.
03:32 Use your hand, mash that panko onto each side
03:36 and compress it to the eggplant.
03:38 And that's one of the last tips
03:40 to forming that crispy layer on the eggplant.
03:43 When frying eggplant, you wanna make sure
03:44 you have a skillet with a little bit of a high side.
03:46 You'll add the oil in about a quarter to a third way up.
03:50 Make sure that the oil gets to about 360 degrees
03:53 because once you add the eggplant into the hot oil,
03:56 the temperature is going to drop immediately
03:58 and it'll stay at a steady 345 to 350 degrees,
04:03 which is where you want it to be.
04:04 Another way to test if the oil is done
04:07 is to either use a thermometer, which I have here,
04:11 or you could take a couple of the breadcrumb
04:13 and sprinkle it into the oil
04:15 and if it starts to fry up, then it's ready.
04:19 See, a little bit of it's frying up.
04:21 That means that it's ready.
04:23 It's hot and ready.
04:24 We'll fry the eggplant on each side
04:26 for about two to three minutes
04:27 until it's golden brown and crispy.
04:30 Do not overcrowd your pan when frying anything
04:33 because it will create sweat,
04:37 which means that it will draw moisture out of the thing
04:39 that is being fried and the thing, the eggplant,
04:43 will not get that crispy golden brown layer on the outside
04:46 because it's just steaming.
04:47 I'm gonna remove the final batch of eggplant.
04:49 They're so golden brown and crispy.
04:51 I even snuck a bite when you weren't looking.
04:54 I usually use a paper towel lined plate,
04:56 but because we're frying so many pieces,
04:59 but if you're layering them,
05:00 like stacking them on top of a plate
05:02 and you don't have enough room,
05:03 then what's gonna happen is they're gonna get soggy bottoms
05:06 and that will defeat the whole purpose
05:07 of why we just fried the eggplant in the first place.
05:10 So use a sheet tray lined with a rack.
05:14 Put a piece of paper towel on the bottom
05:15 so that all the grease falls into the paper towel
05:17 and the paper towel absorbs it,
05:18 which is an easier cleanup.
05:21 And that way, the air will circulate around the eggplant
05:24 to cool it down and it will maintain its crispy exterior.
05:28 Pro tip, we salted the eggplant,
05:30 we salted the flour for the dredging of the eggplant,
05:33 but once we fry the eggplant, when you remove it,
05:35 it kinda loses some of its salty essence.
05:38 So go ahead and just sprinkle
05:40 a little bit more salt over top.
05:42 We have our marinara sauce
05:43 that has been cooking on the stove
05:45 and you can see those really pretty pieces
05:47 of basil floating around, the onion, the garlic.
05:51 Typically with an eggplant parm,
05:52 you don't want something that's been stewing
05:53 on the stove all day like a meat sauce.
05:56 There has to be a balance in marinara sauce
05:57 and there has to be a balance in marinara sauce
05:59 for a really heavily rich fried food dish like this.
06:03 You still want that brightness,
06:04 that acid to cut right through
06:06 that delicious, fried, hunky piece of eggplant.
06:11 When I'm making tomato sauce,
06:13 I typically lean on San Marzano
06:15 because it has the perfect skin to seed to flesh ratio.
06:19 It's tender, it melts in your mouth,
06:22 it crushes well, it cooks down well, it's aromatic.
06:25 It's just a good tomato varietal overall.
06:28 Mutti, Bianco de Napoli,
06:30 they're all really good, solid brands
06:32 of San Marzano tomato that you can use.
06:35 And there is an addition of tomato paste in here.
06:38 If you are in a really big pinch
06:40 and you can't make homemade tomato sauce,
06:42 you can turn to a jarred variety
06:46 like Lidia Bastianich or Rao's.
06:48 Buy really good Pecorino Romano or Parmesan.
06:51 We're using Parmesan in this recipe.
06:53 And grate it yourself.
06:55 Same with the whole milk mozzarella.
06:57 Grate it yourself.
06:58 Do not buy the bagged grated cheese,
07:00 that anti-caking agent.
07:01 We are here for the cheese pull,
07:03 so we want the freshest stuff.
07:05 We wanna do it ourselves.
07:06 And we want all of the cheese strands
07:09 to be dripping all over our face when we eat.
07:11 When layering your eggplant parm,
07:13 you wanna start with sauce on the bottom
07:15 so that you end with the sauce on top and the cheese.
07:18 The sauce acts as the wrapping paper around the dish.
07:22 So we'll start with a layer of sauce.
07:24 We'll add our eggplant in one even layer.
07:27 You might have a little bit of overlapping.
07:29 You might have to tear a couple pieces
07:31 since we're trying to fit circles into a rectangular dish.
07:34 It's totally fine.
07:35 Overlapping, tearing, it's all fine.
07:38 It's all part of the process.
07:39 You're gonna eat it at the end anyway.
07:41 Nobody's gonna know.
07:42 Once that's in, you add your layer of cheese,
07:45 then start over again with more sauce,
07:47 more eggplant, more cheese,
07:49 and continue for about three or four layers
07:51 until it's nice and compacted in the dish
07:54 and it comes up to about just, you know,
07:56 shy of about an eighth of an inch of the top.
08:00 This eggplant parm is like four layers deep,
08:02 tons of cheese, tons of sauce,
08:04 all the eggplant in the world.
08:06 We're just gonna put it in the oven
08:07 for about 40 to 45 minutes at 350
08:10 to get it heated through, that cheese melting,
08:12 the sauce bubbly.
08:14 We'll put a piece of foil on top
08:16 for three quarters of the way through,
08:18 and then we'll remove it at the end
08:19 so that the top could get really golden brown
08:21 and those cute little bubbles will form.
08:24 I am at the eggplant parm tasting end of the journey.
08:27 The tomato sauce, the crunchy eggplant, the parm,
08:31 the mozzarella's all melded together in the oven.
08:34 The layer's melted together.
08:36 The outside of the eggplant latched onto the sauce,
08:38 the cheese, so it's tender, a little bit crispy
08:42 if you get some of those outer edges on the top.
08:44 I stacked this four layers deep.
08:46 It's intense, it's delicious, and I'm gonna try it
08:48 because there's nothing else to do.
08:52 Every step of the way we season this dish,
08:54 it's helping create those layers
08:56 from when we salted the eggplant
08:58 to adding the salt to the flour, the dredging,
09:00 the frying, the sauce, the cheese,
09:03 has that umami, salty factor to it.
09:06 Another pro tip though,
09:08 once those layers get to sit in the fridge overnight
09:10 and you reheat it the next day, it's going to be heavenly.
09:15 For more recipes just like this one,
09:18 stay right here at delish.com.
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