Not-Fried Crunchy Breaded Eggplant Dipping Sticks

24th July 2008

Not-Fried Crunchy Breaded Eggplant Dipping Sticks

posted in gardening, Recipes, Food, How-To |

Out of all of our plants, so far the eggplant has proven the most productive. If we wanted to, I’m sure we could pick 6 eggplants at any given time, though we tend to leave them on the plant for a few days after they’re ready until we want them (which doesn’t seem to affect their flavor at all).

So during the summer and warm months of Fall, I’m sure you’ll be seeing eggplant recipes alongside the Zucchini ones.

Here’s one we tried recently:

Eggplant Dipping Sticks

1 large eggplant, or 4 ichiban eggplants (they’re long and skinny)
1/2 cup toasted wheat germ
1/2 cup Italian breadcrumbs
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
3 eggs, beaten

Preheat your broiler and wash your eggplants…

eggplants from the garden

Cut them into little french-fry like wedges, and then if you want to, you can salt them with Kosher salt to draw out the bitter juices. The way I did it this time was to put the wedges into a colander over a bowl, sprinkle liberally with kosher salt, and top with a smaller colander weighted with the Kosher salt box, so the eggplant pieces were squished.

Mix together the wheat germ, breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, and garlic salt. I toasted the wheat germ in a pan first and then added everything else in with the pan still on low heat, stirring.

eggplant breading

When your eggplant sticks are ready, rinse or wipe off the salt and pat dry with towels. Then dip each stick into the beaten eggs, and roll in the breadcrumb/wheat germ mixture. Place on a cookie sheet prepared with cooking spray.

eggplant dipping sticks

Now broil for about 3 minutes, flip, and broil another 3 minutes or until they’re crispy.

If you’d like, you can serve them with warmed up tomato sauce as a dunker. We ate ours with some pasta salad leftover from a couple days before. Mmm!

eggplant dipping sticks with pasta salad

Enjoy!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 12:25 pm and is filed under gardening, Recipes, Food, How-To. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 On July 24th, 2008, April said:

Awesome timing, I had a crap ton of eggplant that I didn’t know what to do with. YUM

posted on July 24th, 2008 at 3:54 pm

2 On July 24th, 2008, Joyful Abode said:

Oh great, April! Look for another super-yummy eggplant recipe coming up (we made it last night… so good). I hope you enjoy this!

posted on July 24th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

3 On August 2nd, 2008, Wei-Yann said:

Hooray thanks for posting this life-saving (and less greasy) recipe for my eggplants!

posted on August 2nd, 2008 at 10:20 pm

4 On August 3rd, 2008, Maggie said:

I love breaded fried eggplant. These look really delicious and crispy without the frying. I’m going to try them soon.

posted on August 3rd, 2008 at 6:50 am

5 On August 3rd, 2008, oakley rhodes said:

Wow! Eggplant is one of my favorite foods, and this recipe looks so good!

posted on August 3rd, 2008 at 10:09 am

6 On August 3rd, 2008, Kat said:

So I was catching up on my 700+ blog posts from over the past few days (1/6 of which was Tastespotting, btw), and I clicked on the eggplant sticks picture among others so I could come back to them later - I was so tripped out when I discovered it was YOUR page….awesome!! I’ll be trying this soon! =)

posted on August 3rd, 2008 at 9:41 pm