Common eggplant storage techniques at home

A few years ago, the storage of eggplant was reduced to the preparation of specific granular caviar and a spicy dish with garlic, similar to pickled mushrooms. Today, the assortment of blanks has expanded significantly, and with the growth of the vegetable’s popularity, new knowledge has also appeared, thanks to which it is now possible to preserve unprocessed products for as long as possible even in an apartment.

Products unique in appearance and taste can now be preserved, frozen, and stored fresh. The correct use of approaches allows you to save most of the nutrients and trace elements in the composition of the main component, to fix its taste and unusual aroma.

Eggplant freezing technology at home

Among modern hostesses, eggplant freezing is especially popular. The approach can significantly save time on creating blanks, does not require the allocation of a large amount of space under the container with the product, reduces the risk of food poisoning to a minimum. In the pulp of the product, an almost complete set of useful components is preserved. The taste and texture of the product, although changing, is far from the worst.

Before freezing eggplants for the winter, they must be correctly selected and prepared. For such processing, only young eggplants with an elastic surface that do not reach a ripe state are suitable. If you freeze overripe vegetables, then subsequently it will be impossible to eat due to strong bitterness. There is one more point - it is possible to harvest vegetables by freezing only after preliminary heat treatment. Fresh pulp after such events will become similar to rubber, which will significantly affect the quality of the dish.

How to freeze eggplants that have undergone various types of pre-treatment:

Blanched dish.

• My vegetables, we clean, we remove all inedible elements. Hard peeling is also better to cut.
• We cut the product at our discretion, pour it with salt, mix and leave for half an hour. The pulp will give juice and even the slightest bitterness will come out with them.

Tip: If during the cutting process the eggplants begin to rapidly change their color from a light yellow or greenish tint to brown, this is a sign of stale product. Finished products will be bitter, even if they are pre-salted. It is better not to freeze such vegetables.

• Next, squeeze the pieces well, you can not rinse. Dip in boiling water and blanch for 5 minutes. Then we recline in a colander and wait until all the water drains.
• We lay the prepared slices on a dish in one layer and remove for a couple of hours in the freezer for the initial freezing. Frozen pieces are laid out in packages, it is best to make packing in one portion. We remove the product in the appropriate chamber in the refrigerator and use it as necessary.

Baked slices.

• I wash young eggplants and put them on a baking sheet, greased with vegetable oil. Bake them until ready.
• After that, you need to peel the vegetables, if the product is ready, then this will not cause any problems. For freezing you can send a whole eggplant, or pre-sliced.
• Wrap the billet with cling film or lay it in plastic bags and send it to the freezer.

Sauteed vegetables.

• In this case, it will not be possible to preserve the maximum of useful components in the product, but as a result of processing, a finished dish will remain, which, if necessary, will only need to be thawed and heated.
• I wash, clean, and eggplant in circles and boil in salted water for five minutes. After that, we recline in a colander to get rid of excess fluid.
• Fry the billets on a small amount of vegetable oil on both sides and again toss it in a colander, getting rid of excess fluid.
• We cool the product and put it in containers or plastic bags, send it to freeze.

Defrosting such products is very simple. To do this, put them on a dish and leave for a couple of hours in the refrigerator or at room temperature. In some cases, pre-treatment is not even required, the workpieces are simply added to the dishes.

Eggplant storage as preserves

If for some reason you don’t want to freeze the eggplants, you can turn to the conservation that has been proven over the years. In addition to traditional caviar, the following options of dishes made of blue vegetables are very popular today:

• Diced products are salted with dill. In this case, salt is taken in an amount of 2-3% of the net weight of vegetables.
• Eggplant rolled up in brine will be a great snack. Only at first they need to be fully cooked and, through longitudinal sections, stuffed with salt and finely chopped garlic.
• A dish that is unique in taste can be obtained if seeds are removed from the eggplant, grated with salt from the inside and stuffed with a mixture of chopped garlic and herbs. Billets are tightly packed in jars and poured with vinegar marinade.
• There is also an express version of a delicious dish of "blue ones". We cut the vegetable into cubes, put it in a jar and fill it with hot tomato juice. Then roll up the product and quickly cool.
• Eggplants make delicious salads. The product is cut into circles, fry in vegetable oil. We spread the workpiece in a jar, alternating with mugs of carrots and onions, herbs, celery and parsley roots. All this is filled with oil from the pan, sterilized and rolled up.

To keep the workpieces in the right form for several months, you need to keep them in a dry room with a temperature of no higher than + 5ºС. Most often, at home, a balcony is used for this purpose.

How to store fresh eggplant?

If vegetables need to be kept fresh as long as possible, then it is better to take late varieties. After harvesting, you do not need to wash them, it is better to simply wipe them with a dry cloth. Next, you can use one of the approaches:

• We wrap each fruit separately in polyethylene or several layers of cling film and lay in a dry container. It must be put in a cool dry place. The refrigerator is not suitable, it does not lie vegetables for two weeks.
• If there is not much eggplant, each fruit must be wrapped in paper (not waxed, without a font) and put in a single layer in a dry box. We expose them to a cool balcony or put them in the basement.
• Eggplants are well preserved under a layer of wood ash. But only the boxes should be deep, and the temperature should not exceed + 7ºС.
• The owners of the suburban area can store eggplant directly on the beds after the harvest. Before the onset of cold weather, the fruits are collected in piles and sprinkled with straw for warming.
• If there is a basement and it does not differ in high humidity, then you can spread the straw on the floor, put eggplant on it and leave it for a couple of weeks. Then we sort out the fruits, leaving the best. We wrap them in paper, spread on a thick layer of straw, cover with a couple of layers of burlap and another layer of straw.

Choosing the last direction, you need to consider that it does not guarantee any specific dates. Eggplant can lie for a couple of weeks or several months. Sometimes they live to a new crop, without losing elasticity and juiciness.