I often search for tips to improve my cooking practice. No matter how big or small those tips are, they always raise the quality of my meals. Because I’ve never been successful at making dishes with grilled eggplants, the video below caught my eye.

Prized for their glossy and deep purple colour, eggplants (or aubergines) are not only good looking, they’re also good for you. In addition to being an excellent source of dietary fibre, they’re packed with a host of vitamins and minerals. They also contain some interesting disease fighting compounds, such as chlorogenic acid and nasunin, the latter of which gives eggplant its purple colour.

A regular consumption of eggplant in your diet can lower LDL (bad) cholesterol, promote cardiovascular health as well as prevent cancer. With its high fibre and low fat content, eggplant can help people manage type 2 diabetes and obesity.

I want to cook more often with eggplants because they’re so good for you and when properly grilled, they’re even better. In the short video clip below, Catherine Katz demonstrates a simple but worthwhile trick to making grilled eggplant.

Before grilling, there’s no need to salt the eggplant slices for an hour and then rinse them out with cold water to leach out the bitterness. Today, eggplants are bred not to have that kind of bitterness, so salting is not necessary. Also, you don’t have to brush the eggplants with oil beforehand.

Instead, put the raw eggplant slices (½ inch thick with skin) straight into an oil-free and hot pan and cook them for 4-5 minutes. After, turn off the stove and drizzle just a few tablespoons of olive oil on top of the slices.

When done, put the pre-cooked eggplant slices at the bottom of a pan and pour the remaining ingredients of the dish that you are making on top of the slices and bake in the oven. Catherine did this with her Eggplant, Chickpeas & Raisin recipe and it is delicious.

Thank you, Catherine, for the grilled eggplant tip!