Eggplants stuffed with minced meat

How to prepare some aubergines stuffed with meat .

We are in the middle of the eggplant season ! Those planted in the 1st fortnight of August are harvested from September to December, hence their price does not even reach one euro per kilo.

In any case, I encourage you to make this recipe with vegetables all year round as you will find this vegetable in all supermarkets thanks to our greenhouses in southern Spain, especially in the great Almería.

Although it is in these dates, just when the summer ends, when they are more tasty and cheaper.

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Eggplant  is a very versatile ingredient for many recipes, on the blog you can find our  famous Mutabal , Italian, Parmesan , in the form of Saint James (battered) or a Greek musaka of cracking.

You will find some recipes with stuffed aubergines, from which I propose today, to stuffed aubergines with rice , meat and mushrooms  or the classic ones at home with ham and meat .

Vegetable and vegetable fillings are a gourmet wardrobe, as you can see in stuffed zucchini .

The use of aubergine as a container of its own meat plus the accompaniment of meat, fish or simply vegetables, makes us find ourselves before a dish that covers all nutritional needs and at the same time is most tasty.

Recipe that is an explosion of flavor of rich things, by the presentation photo you can already imagine how they are, do not stop preparing them, you will repeat.

Preparation of aubergines

1. We start by cutting the eggplants into two halves, we choose a large bowl and fill with salted water.
2. We leave the eggplants resting in this water for 15 minutes to remove the bitterness that the meat of the eggplant could have.
3. We wash the pieces of eggplant and dry them with absorbent paper. We season them with a little salt, freshly ground black pepper and a thread of virgin olive oil.
4. We preheat the oven to 190º C and place the halves.
5. Bake at 170º C in the middle tray with temperature up and down for another 15 minutes.
6. We remove from the oven and let them cool. We carefully empty each half, it is best to do it with a small teaspoon leaving a little pulp surrounding the skin.
7. In this way it will remain firm in the subsequent baking and, in addition to being rich, they will be beautiful.
8. We reserve the pulp and the eggplant halves to add to the subsequent filling.

Preparation of the meat and vegetable filling

1. For this filling we have chosen meat, but remember that you can tune the recipe to your liking.
2. Chop the 2 onions, the two leeks, the red pepper and the garlic cloves, all very finite.
3. We peel and chop the carrot as best as possible, the finer they are the better because they will pass when making the sauce.
4. In a large saucepan, add the extra virgin olive oil and add the onions and leeks.
5. We add a pinch of salt and let them sweat, letting water run for 12 minutes over medium heat.
6. We add the minced garlic, I usually use the garlic crusher because I don’t like to find the pieces later.
7. We let it go a little (about 3 minutes) and add the carrots and the red pepper.
8. We poach all the vegetables at low temperature about 15 minutes. Which is more or less the time that the eggplants will be in the water resting.
9. We wash and chop the mushrooms very well and add them to the casserole with the rest of the vegetables.
10. We stir to integrate the flavors well, in five minutes we will see how they will have released all the water.
11. Season with salt and pepper the meat. We add the minced meat to the casserole with the vegetables and spices of your choice. Fry for 5-7 minutes over low heat, stirring constantly.
12. We add the pieces of the eggplant pulp that we have previously chopped, the tomato and a glass of white wine.
13. We let everything reduce until we have a thick sauce. Approximately 10 minutes over low heat.

Béchamel preparation, baking and final presentation

1. We check the point of salt, surely you do not need it, but if it did add very little more. We reserve and let it cool.
2. We prepare the béchamel .
3. We put the oven at 200º C so that it is hot when we put the refractory source with the stuffed aubergines.
4. When the béchamel is ready, fill the aubergines with the well-drained meat sauce, using a slotted spoon to drain all the broth.
5. We will let this broth reduce in a saucepan in case we want to decorate the dish. With 5 minutes on high heat we will have a spectacular sauce.
6. Top each half with two tablespoons of generous bechamel.
7. Sprinkle with the cheese that you like the most and cook for 5 minutes at 200º C. I love this type of recipe, but the oven makes the skin of the eggplant hard and parched, that’s why I eat everything except the skin.
8. We remove from the oven and assemble the plate with two halves, that is, one eggplant per person.

Accompany with a tomato salad, it will not even painted. There you have them, serve them very hot.

Here you have a step by step in photos where I show how to prepare this recipe for stuffed aubergines . Do not miss any detail so that you can see some aubergines that will triumph at home.

Tips for a delicious stuffed eggplant

• For this recipe I chose four eggplants that are quite similar and thick, about 300 grams each.
• Why?  at home at first we cut it lengthwise. But the truth is that in the end part of them is wasted and in the source there is not much room.
• When my mother prepared the stuffed peppers , she cut a little bit of the base to settle them in the source. I removed the lid of the pepper, which was also cut into small pieces to add to the filling.
• For almost a year, we have been preparing stuffed aubergines like peppers, so nothing is wasted.
• Only vegetables are also very good and you can substitute meat for fish (a good monkfish) or seafood. Other meats that do very well and provide less calories are chicken or turkey cubes. In this case I have decided on minced meat, pork and beef mixture, so that it is much juicier.
• Remember that we have added salt to the eggplants, vegetables and in the end everything ends together. In addition, the cheese and the bechamel with which we are going to coat or seal the aubergines also have some salt
• Since you are with the oven on and you are at work. By increasing the ingredients a little you will have a perfect dish for another day since they can be frozen once cooked before gratinating.
• When you feel like, you just have to defrost, bake and ready. Do not freeze more than 3 months.