The Taste Test To Check If Your Eggplant Is Undercooked

Whether you grill it, roast it, or saute it, perfectly cooked eggplant is nutty, earthy savoriness at its best, with a creamy, custard-like texture to boot. It's a far cry from the spongy, seedy, bitter taste of raw eggplant. However, bitterness does serve a purpose in the taste test to check your eggplant's doneness.

Eggplants contain compounds known as alkaloids and anthocyanins which are found in large concentrations in the seeds and skin respectively. However, the bitterness should disappear when fully cooked. Plus, cooking will also transform a spongy, dry flesh into a consistency that all but melts in your mouth. So, when you pull your eggplant off the grill or out of the oven, a bitter taste and a dry, fibrous chew means that the eggplant is undercooked.

You can start with visual indicators like golden to deep brown flesh and wrinkled or collapsed skin along with the skewer test to ensure creamy, soft flesh. But the ultimate moment of truth comes with the taste test. Luckily, if the taste test proves to be bitter, all you have to do is cook your eggplant a few minutes longer.

Undercooking is only one reason eggplant might taste bitter. Other factors include age, type, and size. While it might be tempting to pick a huge eggplant to feed a crowd, size is often an indicator of age. Larger eggplants tend to be older, which means bigger seeds and thicker skin. Since bitter compounds are found in the skin and seeds, larger and older eggplants might be more bitter. Look for smaller, brighter-colored eggplants instead. Of course, you can also look for less bitter eggplant varieties like Chinese or Japanese.

Even if you end up with an old or seedy vegetable, there are a few preventative tips you can try when cooking eggplant to avoid bitterness. You can remove the skin before cooking to rid a large portion of its bitterness and avoid a potentially tough texture. Salting sliced eggplants will help draw bitter compounds found in the flesh to the surface, which you can whisk away by patting the slices with a paper towel before cooking them.

Despite being fully cooked, eggplants may still have a slightly bitter finish, but you can use this to your advantage by pairing eggplants with complementary flavors. Making stuffed eggplant boats with grains like barley or farro, pine nuts, and dried fruit will balance any bitterness with sweet and savory notes. Mashing roasted eggplant into baba ganoush with tahini and lemon juice will also bring nutty, earthy tastes to the forefront.