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This Japanese eggplant recipe makes the vegetable taste irresistible! Roast it with garlic and ginger for a simple side dish.

Japanese Eggplant
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Looking for a Japanese eggplant recipe? Here’s an easy to cook it that makes it taste so irresistible, you won’t be able to stop sneaking bites. Try this roasted Japanese eggplant with garlic and ginger!

Alex and I picked up this veggie at our farmer’s market, and we couldn’t stop ourselves from devouring the entire platter. Roasting eggplant makes it lusciously tender, and with a sauce of garlic, ginger, and Sriracha, it’s absolutely irresistible.

Japanese eggplant

What makes Japanese eggplant unique

Japanese eggplant is native to Southern and Southeastern Asia and has been used in Japanese, Chinese and Indian cooking for thousands of years. It has a long, narrow shape and it’s lighter color than globe eggplant, the type that is very dark purple with a rounded bottom. The Japanese eggplant has a sweeter, more delicate flavor than globe eggplant, thinner skin, and fewer seeds.

We found a few Japanese eggplants at our farmer’s market, but we sometimes also find it at mainstream grocery stores. We actually tried this recipe with globe eggplant to see if there was a flavor difference. Turns out, the Japanese eggplant was much tastier!

Tips for this Japanese eggplant recipe

This Japanese eggplant recipe stars the flavors of fresh garlic, ginger, and soy sauce. It takes about 35 minutes to roast the eggplant, but it’s well worth it for the hands-off method. Here are a few tips for this recipe:

  • Roast at high heat. An oven temperature of 425°F makes perfectly tender eggplant.
  • Use fresh ginger and garlic. The flavor is dependent on fresh: no jarred garlic or dried ground ginger here!
  • Peel the ginger with a spoon. Ginger root is notoriously hard to peel with a vegetable peeler, but peeling it with a spoon works like a charm! A microplane is our tool of choice for grating garlic and ginger, but you can also mince with a knife.
  • Roast 35 to 40 minutes. Roasting a little longer gets the eggplant to the “falling apart” stage; the shorter end still has a little chew and it holds together.
Japanese Eggplant

Storing leftovers

This Japanese eggplant recipe tastes best the day it is made. If you’d like to store leftovers, they work refrigerated for up to 3 days in a sealed container.

More Japanese eggplant recipes

There are so many ways to prepare this delicious vegetable, including many traditional Asian recipes for preparing it. Here are a few ideas from some recipe creators with Japanese heritage from around the web:

Dietary notes

This Japanese eggplant recipe is vegetarian, vegan, plant-based, dairy-free, and gluten-free.

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Japanese Eggplant with Garlic & Ginger

Japanese Eggplant
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4 from 2 reviews

This Japanese eggplant recipe makes it taste irresistible! Roast it with garlic and ginger for a simple side dish.

  • Author: Sonja Overhiser
  • Prep Time: 10 minutes
  • Cook Time: 35 minutes
  • Total Time: 45 minutes
  • Yield: 4 1x
  • Category: Side dish
  • Method: Roasted
  • Cuisine: Vegetables
  • Diet: Vegan

Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 1/2 pounds Japanese eggplants (about 3 medium)
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • ½ teaspoon grated fresh garlic*
  • ½ teaspoon grated fresh ginger*
  • 1 tablespoon soy sauce or tamari
  • ½ teaspoon Sriracha
  • ½ teaspoon kosher salt
  • For garnish: thinly sliced chives or green onion / scallion tops or sesame seeds (optional)

Instructions

  1. Preheat an oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. Cut the eggplant in half lengthwise, then cut it into 3-inch pieces.
  3. In a large bowl, mix the olive oil, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, Sriracha and kosher salt. Add the sliced eggplant and toss with your hands until evenly coated. Place the eggplant on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and spread it into an even layer, cut side up. Sprinkle with 1 pinch more kosher salt.
  4. Roast for 20 minutes, then remove the tray from the oven. Flip the eggplant pieces and roast another 15 to 20 minutes, until browned and tender. The eggplant will be very tender so handle it gently.
  5. Garnish with chives or green onion tops and sesame seeds, if desired. Serve immediately. Leftovers store refrigerated up to 3 days. 

Notes

*Ginger root is notoriously hard to peel with a vegetable peeler: it’s knobby and the skin is tough and stringy. Peeling it with a spoon works like a charm! A microplane is our tool of choice for grating garlic and ginger. If you don’t have one or a grater, you can mince it with a knife. 

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About the authors

Alex & Sonja

Hi! We’re Alex & Sonja Overhiser, authors of the acclaimed cookbooks A Couple Cooks and Pretty Simple Cooking—and a real life couple who cooks together. We founded the A Couple Cooks website in 2010 to share seasonal recipes and the joy of home cooking. Now, we’ve got over 3,000 well-tested recipes, including Mediterranean diet, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, smoothies, cocktails, and more!

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2 Comments

  1. Eva says:

    Sauce is tasty but only covers the very exterior of 1 lb of eggplant. Since eggplant is very bland by itself the rest of the piece of eggplant is pretty tasteless. Will make more sauce next time and let it soak in to the interior before cooking. With this batch I scraped the flesh out and mashed it to maximize the sauce to eggplant ratio.






  2. Donna Merola says:

    Easy and yummy. LOVE japanesse eggplant and like that this is an oven roasted recipe