Stuffed Eggplant With Ground Beef

As Yom Kippur is now behind us, Succot is coming up the hill and although we are celebrating without our beloved children and grandchildren due to the Corona lockdown, and that is very hard, we still celebrate. So how do we do so? Why with delicious foods and all the symbols of the holiday and like the little engine that could, we chug along.

DH and I will decorate our Succah and pray that next year we will share it with all our kids, grandkids and relatives joyously together.

I know that many places Succot is cold and you huddle together for warmth (when I was growing up in New York, that was often the case!) but in Israel it’s usually quite warm and we have to remember to position fans all about to keep cool. Even so, there are certain foods that seem like they are tailor made for serving in the Succah. These eggplants are delicious and delightful to serve since they maintain their shape and it looks like a whole eggplant spread wider with filling.

Many people don’t like eggplant since it can be bitter, but just follow my below instructions and it will lose the bitterness and you will love it.

Start with two medium nice eggplants.

Wash them, including their tops and shake off water. Now this is important. Do NOT chop off their heads, you need the top to hold the shape together. Take a sharp knife and leaving the top intact, make slices down the length of the eggplant, like so:

Then take kosher (coarse) salt, if you only have regular, you may use it, and heavily sprinkle on the slices, leaving the eggplant to sit with the slices enclosing the salt, like so:

Note the big salt crystals, that’s the kosher salt. Now let the eggplants rest like this for about 30 minutes. Longer is okay, shorter not so much. Give it the time. The salt draws out the bitter juices (not everyone is sensitive to this but many people feel the difference. It can be astringent) and after the 30 minutes, you will see the eggplants sitting in a pool of liquid. Wash it away and rinse off the eggplants to remove the salt and juices. Set aside.

Now preheat your oven to 350 F and assemble your ingredients.

Take a baking pan that not only will hold the eggplants but you will want the liquid to go halfway up the sides of the eggplants so they will cook properly. So the pan should be big enough but not too big.

Now prepare the meat filling.

Take a pound or so (1/2 a kilo) of ground beef and mix it with egg, breadcrumbs, 1/4 cup of good pasta sauce, cumin and garlic and chopped, fried onion. Mix all together.

Take your baking pan and pour half the leftover sauce into the bottom of the pan.

Now take your rinsed eggplant, and divide up the chopped beef evenly to fill the slits evenly and lay in the sauced pan. You can now add additional sauce to go halfway up the eggplants or add hot water.

Drizzle 1/4 cup of sauce on top of stuffed eggplants and drizzle with olive oil, salt and garlic powder.

Cover tightly with foil (or lid if you have one) and bake for 30 minutes, then uncover and continue baking about 20 more minutes or until a wooden skewer very easily pierces the eggplant, they should look a bit deflated but still really nice.

This absolutely needs rice or bread or challah or matzah to sop up all that incredible sauce and will be a big hit in your Succah and anywhere else. Chag Sameach!

Stuffed Eggplant With Ground Beef

Two medium eggplants, washed and excess water shaken off
Kosher salt
1 pound approximately (1/2 a kilo) chopped meat
1 egg
1/2 cup breadcrumbs or 1/3 cup matzah meal or 1/4-1/3 cup potato starch
2 heaping tablespoon chopped fried onions, or one small onion, peeled, chopped and fried in a tablespoon of oil
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin (for Passover you can skip this)
1 -2 24.5 ounce jar tomato sauce for pasta ( or 1-2 700 gram jars, depending if you want sauce or water to add to halfway mark on eggplant. I prefer sauce)
Olive oil

Directions:

Leaving the top of the eggplant intact make four or five slices in the eggplants lengthwise. (See pics above) Sprinkle them heavily with the kosher salt stacking them as though they were one eggplant closed (See pics above) and let them sit for approximately 30 minutes. Rinse off the salt and the bitter liquid which comes out of the eggplant and shake off excess water. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Prepare the chopped meat mixture by mixing chopped meat, the egg, the breadcrumbs (or matzah meal or potato starch), the garlic powder, cumin (skip for Passover), fried chopped onion and a quarter of a cup of the tomato sauce. Pour approximately half of the rest of the tomato sauce into the bottom of a greased pan. Lay the eggplants down in the tomato sauce and spread open the cuts stuffing them equally with the chopped meat mixture. Drizzle about a quarter cup of the jar of tomato sauce over the eggplants and then sprinkle them with additional garlic powder and grind some salt or sprinkle salt over the top then drizzle lightly with olive oil. Check the level of sauce up the sides of the eggplants. It should go halfway up the sides. Either add more sauce or hot water to go halfway up. Cover pan tightly with tin foil and bake at 350 F for approximately half an hour then uncover and bake an additional 20 minutes or till eggplants can be pierced easily with a skewer and look a bit deflated.